Being a professor is supposed to be an intellectual pursuit. You deal in ideas, after all. But I’ve had an emotional several days as the semester, and my first full year of teaching, draws to a close. Students crying, students triumphant, and me filled with relief and pride, anger and distress. Teaching, even at a university, is a human endeavor, with all its messiness and ambiguity and strife.
First some good news. I have a verbal reappointment agreement. Which means the head of my department aka my boss has invited me back to teach for another two years. I was starting to sweat this one a bit, honestly, as it’s December and my current contract runs out in January. I’m in the course catalog to teach classes in Spring, so I suppose I was pretty safe, but never count your chickens etc. etc. In any case, this means I’m Professor of Practicing for another two more years. I feel like this first year was a test of whether or not I could even do this—or would like it. The answer to both seems to be yes. This next two years will be more about can I excel at this; namely, can I become a real asset to the department. Can I make myself indispensable via the book, new classes, and generally increasing the reputation and visibility of the department. I think I can.
Since it’s the end of the semester, we’re wrapping up final projects and my students have all been doing great. My Interaction Design Fundamental class took their prototypes of semi-autonomous two-wheeled vehicles to the lobby of the Tepper Business School and tested them with passersby.
Today, at their last class, we had a science fair-style show with visitors coming in to play with their prototypes, some of which were downright impressive. Doubly so considering many of my students have never taken a design class before. They came a long way in four months. I’m quite proud of them.
Two of the students told us that after taking this class, they want to become designers. Which is really something. Makes you feel like you’re making a difference in people’s lives. Of course, it might just be the subject matter and nothing to do with me. Although I have to think if I sucked at teaching design, I might sour a whole group of people against considering it as a career.
Meanwhile, a student whose portfolio I reviewed a few weeks ago got a job offer. More of that, please.
Now for some less great stuff.
One of the things you aren’t prepared for as a new professor is students behaving badly. I can’t/won’t get into any details here, but it became clear to me over the last week that a (thankfully) small group of my students was seemingly engaged in conduct that is (at best) unethical.
It caused me a lot of angst, because do I, a junior faculty member with an as-of-yet unsigned contract, want to wade into an administrative nightmare, confront the students, and cause a huge amount of drama during the last week of the semester? No, I do not. But do I want my classes to be fair for all students? Yes, yes I do. Very much so.
It doesn’t help that much of the evidence of this misconduct is observational and thus not as ironclad as one would like when considering serious accusations that could lead to very serious consequences. The burden of proof is on me. I don’t want it to be my word against theirs.
But I couldn’t do nothing, so I did something. But that something was ultimately flaccidly unsatisfying. The outcome I’d hoped might happen, didn’t.
Apologies for the deliberate vagueness.
The one tool left at my disposal—grades—is still in play, but even there, there’s a contract aka a syllabus that I need to abide by. I need to act ethically myself even if they aren’t. I can’t just fail students because I believe they did something fraudulent; I have to be able to demonstratively prove it. And also it has to be in line with how I’m grading other students. Because fairness.
Next semester, we’re changing the class to make what they did impossible to do, but that fix doesn’t make the current moment feel as festive as it should, especially given all my good news and the amazing student work this week. The back of every Christmas tree ornament is in shadow, I guess.