Dear Professor
“How can we make class discussions more active?” the professor asks, standing in front of the room with a red pen and an oversized sheet of paper taped to the blackboard.
I glare at my notebook and imagine throwing a brick through her piece of paper.
I scribble across the page:
How about you nurture the wellbeing of your students?
She writes on the paper: Sit in a square formation.
Recognize our pain and our struggles as human beings and make the class meet us where we’re at?
She writes: Small group work.
How about love us, care for us, and draw us into our fulfillment and flourishing so that we are capable of forming the complex thoughts you hope for us to have?
She writes: Mediate heated debates.
How about you build the trust of the class piece by piece by teaching them that you genuinely value them and treat them with concern?
She writes: More open-ended questions.
I never talk in class, but I can’t sit still anymore. I thrust my hand in the air. She doesn’t see it for a while, even as she tries to pry answers out of the other students.
“How about productive silence?” I offer. “Some people take more time to think or process in other ways. We don’t always have to have constant speaking.”
“Productive silence,” she murmurs. “OK, add it to the list.”
It goes on the bottom, and somehow the marker has started to run out of ink already.
I stare out the window and silently give up.
A few weeks later, I sit at a crowded table in a leadership meeting for a student organization. Each of us manages a team of six or eight fellow students, and one of the managers can’t get his team to follow through with their work.
Everyone around the table seems to be in agreement: we need to crack down. They plan to have one-on-ones and let the offending members know that they are letting down the entire organization. The members will either need to contribute more or leave the group.
I can’t watch this go on.
I lean back in my chair and try to tune them out, but I can’t.
Finally, when everyone else has finished speaking, I lean forward, put my elbows on the table, and tell him:
“This is no one’s first priority — that’s just how it is. We have to meet people where they are. In my team, I try to be aware of what’s going on in each person’s life, and figure out how I can help make this fit into that the best it can. I always start my meetings by asking people how they are to get a baseline.” I swallow. My head aches too much to be eloquent.
He’s nodding, but not saying anything.
“I know if I take care of my team, they will take care of me by doing the work.”
He nods and stares over my shoulder. “Yeah, I guess that’s a good point.” Everyone goes back to talking about cracking down, and the meeting ends.
Dear Professor,
It’s me. That kid who sits in the same seat every class, the kid who stares down at the desk, the kid always scribbling in some notebook or other and sneaking peeks at my phone. The one who always looks zoned out or half-asleep, or otherwise angry and uncomfortable. The one who never talks to the other students or to you unless spoken to.
Listen, I’m not who you think I am.
I’m not disengaged. I’m not slacking off. It’s not that I can’t be bothered.
I come to class exhausted and put my head down on the desk. You assume I’ve been out until 3am partying or cramming for an exam. You feel something ranging from annoyance at the frivolity of college life to understanding that students have stressful lives.
But what you don’t know is that I come to class every day on eight hours of sleep, sometimes nine. I’m exhausted because between a chronic illness, grief, frequently interrupted sleep, and all the other classes I’ve been to today, I’ve run out of energy. I want to give your class the same enthusiasm and engagement I have on my best days, but most of the time I can’t. I’m sorry.
I come to class tired. I slept every night this week on the floor. I sleep more solidly there. It’s easier than fighting for an hour in the morning to get out of bed. I force down half of a breakfast I don’t want, I drag myself through my morning classes. I squeeze my grief into the cracks and it fills up everything. Sometimes I’ve eaten lunch, sometimes I haven’t eaten all day. I can only smile and say, “I’m OK, and you?” so many times before I can’t.
I don’t talk in class. It’s not because I haven’t done the reading or I don’t care about your class. I know you get frustrated because all you want is a lively discussion. But I should tell you that I process through writing. I would gladly write you letters in class, but I won’t speak up.
I am afraid to speak up because every thought I have comes back to “and my mother is dead.” No one wants to hear another story about death. No one will understand anyway.
I don’t speak up because I’m not thinking about this. I’m thinking about human life and death, I’m thinking about how to love a broken world, and I’m thinking about the systems that shape how we interact and perceive our realities. Trust me, I’m thinking. But I don’t know how to put that into this conversation.
I don’t know how to sit in the middle of a room and not say, “but what about the humanity of it?” I don’t know how to walk into a class on civil war and not ask about all the people who died. I don’t know how to talk about student stress without talking about grief and our campus culture.
You have a mission, and an exam, and a textbook to cover. So I let you do that. I carry my questions about humanity and how the world works, and you carry your own questions about the readings and problem sets.
Some days, I stare at you absently. My gaze slides off the edge of the blackboard and onto the floor, the windows, the walls. Sometimes I am in physical pain or emotional pain, or my illness robs me of my focus. Some days, my mind really is absent, because the bright white lecture hall drowns out the blackness of outside and, for once, I can breathe, at least for an hour.
I check my phone all the time. I check for messages from my brothers or my father. I am afraid of losing them too soon. I check for messages from an online grief community that cares for me more than you dare to. I check for emails about the next crisis I know is coming. I check for news articles about all the tragedies this world survives every day. I check for memes to block it all out.
You want my focus. But how can I do just one thing at a time when my entire world is spinning around me and I can’t catch all the flying pieces? How can I do just one thing at a time when my life is a bunch of helium balloons headed for the sky, and every time I get one or another tied down, the rest fly away without me?
Dear Professor,
I’m sorry.
I want to do better.
I want to be the person I was last year.
I want to be the student I was last year.
But I’m not.
I’m here, as I am.
I’m here, doing the best I can.
Someday I will find the strength and the courage in me to do everything I ought to do.
In the meantime, I am here.
Take care of me, and I will take care of the work.
Or don’t, and I will do the work anyway.
But I can’t participate the way you ask me to. Not without your help. Not without your dedication to making it work. Not without you stepping down from the podium at the front of the room and walking beside me through this.
You don’t need to become my closest confidant. You don’t need to check in with me every day or every week. You don’t need to sit with me for hours, or bring me chocolate when I’m crying, or even write me a sympathy card.
Just acknowledge me.
Give me a home, and I will let down my walls.
Make me welcome here, and I will lay down my arms and let you see me as I am.
Make space for me, and I will fill that space.
Make space for all the parts of me, and I will come to that space, over and over again, with everything I have.
Until then, I’ll just be that kid with her head on the desk and headphones in.
