Thoughts on...My Students

As part of the benevolent welfare package that the university provides me, I am rewarded with the opportunity to teach three sections of Spanish a year. This semester, I have about 50 cell-phone chatting, latest- style wearing young men and women, mostly between the ages of 18 and 20. As I go home at night disturbed by the thought that many of them possess credit cards from their parents with spending limits higher than what I get paid in an entire year, I console myself with thoughts of them hunched over computer terminals in the wee hours of the morning, attempting to remember the difference between ser and estar.

Yet, for all of my frustrations with life in graduate school, I have found that teaching is usually more of a reward than a pain. I learn from my students, and I hope that occassionally, they learn something from me. With such a small teacher-student age difference, I constantly fight the tempation to be their friend instead of their profesora. I give them knowing smiles when they arrive late to class, groggy and still with sleep lines across their faces, and I remember that I was like that once. There is part of me that still wishes I had the benefit of showing up in my pyjamas, slinking into the back row and drowning out the lecture for the next hour.

I am constantly reminded of how young they are. They rush to seem worldy, experienced, wise; I see through it. The evidence against their maturity includes Hillary Duff t-shirts and the fact that they have watched Mary Kate & Ashley videos. But at the same time, they also call my bluff. They ask me questions like "How old are you?" and my personal favorite, "How is it you're qualified to teach this class?". They enjoy reminding me of my own inexperience, and their bruising of my ego keeps me humble.

Furthermore, my students relish the fact that their lives are all more exciting than mine. They groan in disappointment when I tell them that my entertainment for the weekend included reading an obnoxious amount of pages in various textbooks and writing an essay. Not only do my students have lives, they enjoy going to places where they can see and be seen. Students in my sections claim to have met/seen: Paris Hilton, Nicky Hilton, Richard Gere, Pierce Brosnan, Heather Locklear, Michael Jordan, Josh Gracin, etc, etc, etc. Number of famous people I have met: 0. They hold this over my head as proof of their inherent coolness. When prompted to write on exams what they will be like someday, they invariably respond: rich, successful, happy. Many of them wish to be famous like the people they pride themselves on having met.

For a moment, a melancholic smile creeps across my face. I marvel at their idealism. And I think of the days when I was 18 and I was convinced I knew everything...