Generalization #1: Everyone likes to be listened to. Being a professor is being paid to be listened to. It’s like being a restaurant reviewer or a professional athlete — your job is doing what others do for fun. Generalization #2: American colleges are run more for the benefit of professors than for the benefit of students, as I have intimated earlier.
That’s why this complaint is noteworthy:
This has been an excruciating term, because for the first time I had students who resented having to think, to work, to meet expectations, who seemed to really believe that showing up was all it took . . . As hard as I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to salvage any time for my own research, so I feel as though — in addition to wasting my efforts and care and concern on students who wouldn’t even grasp that I was doing them some favors (yes, I’ll teach extra evening sessions to help you understand the material that was a prerequisite for the course, but, um, yes, you need to do the reading) — I made absolutely no progress toward tenure. . . . This term has taken too much out of me, and right now, the thought of teaching again — ever — makes me want to sob. So here’s my secret: I don’t want to go back. I never want to see these people again — colleagues or students — and I think I made a terrible mistake.
A comment was “AMEN!”
I’m sure we’re genetically wired to teach and learn but that doesn’t mean the process can’t go badly wrong. We’re genetically wired to eat, too, and lots of ways people eat are very unhealthy. I have compared formal education to agriculture. Sure, agriculture is more efficient than hunting and gathering but agriculture caused nutrient deficiencies that reduced human health for a very long time. (My weight-control research and omega-3 research suggest it is still doing so.) We barely know how to eat. This complaint suggests we know even less how to teach.
I am very surprised that you see this comment as unusual. I am a PhD student and although I agree that schools are not run for the benefits of students, they are not really run for the benefits of professors either. Especially not when you consider the mass cuts of tenured professors and shifts towards adjuncts, the horrendous job markets, the heavy teaching loads and incredibly high publication requirements to get tenure, etc. Teaching is not just hearing yourself talk; it requires pedagogical skill, a great deal of patience, creativity and personality. I wish I could just talk to my students about things I was interested in and have that count as teaching. Unfortunately, I often have to teach subjects I know little about or am not interested in, to students who are not interested either, and do the best job that I can. It is a JOB, not a privilege.
I didn’t see the complaint as unusual, I saw it as noteworthy, given how good the job should be. To the average non-professor, I think, being a professor looks like a very nice job.