Greetings Dear Reader,
When working as a professor, I would often struggle with
student reviews. The problem was mine
and not theirs. If I received a hundred
reviews in a semester and only one of them was negative, that was all that I
seemed to take in.
I was mulling over this darkly at the end of a semester when
I had 230 students and all the reviews were glowing save one. This particular student had turned in zero
homework, missed twenty percent of the class, and failed all three major tests
in the course. He failed because he did
not put in the effort.
When he came to me at the end of the term wanting to know
how he could pass the course, my first thought was that he invent a time
machine. I did not say this. Being a merciful man, I suggested that if he
were to turn in all his missing work and make an “A” on the final, he might
pass with a “D”. He vowed to do all of
this. He did not. He failed because he did not do the work.
His review stated that I was “the worst professor ever,”
that I “did not care about my students,” and that I “needed to learn how to
understand a student’s needs.” Keep in
mind that I had a couple of hundred other reviews that said things like, “the
best professor ever,” and “I could not have gotten through this semester with
his help.”
As I sat pondering this, a colleague noticed my discomfort
and inquired as to my consternation. I
showed her the review. She asked to see
some of the other ones. She read a few
more, smiling. She turned to me and
said, “Oil and glue”. My expression made
it clear that I had no idea what she meant.
I should have.
She explained that the best teachers are coated with oil and
glue. Good reviews slide off of them
like they are water hitting oil. Bad
reviews stick like they are dry feathers hitting glue. We want every student to succeed so we take
in the negative and do not accept the positive.
The next day she gave me a book written specifically for college
professors that addressed this. I
learned from it just how deeply I feast on the negative directed at me and pass
over the positive.
In considering the things on which we feed this has to be a
two-way street. I have learned to allow
the good things said to me to sink in even though I still feel unworthy most of
the time. I am learning to let the
negative wash over me without being offended and learning what I can from it.
The more important aspect of this is to consider how I
communicate things. If I am being
negative toward others, will I say something that sticks and cause them pain? If I criticize more than I praise, am I neglecting
the needs of those around me? The easy
answer is that I must not feed the hunger to be critical. My thinking must be critical in the
evaluative sense but must not become critical in the damaging, hurtful
sense.
If I am to feed others with grace, love, and kindness, I
must look for the positive and the potential in others. My duty is to tell them the potential I see
and not try to force them into it. I can,
rather, love them and give them the space to become what they are designed to become. I am obligated to be sensitive to my areas of
oil and glue and to yours Dear Reader.
If I look at how Jesus deals with others, he praises their
faith and tells them their potential. He
shows them, love, where they are and offers them a better path. It is Christ that will build in others the
beauty they can achieve. It is my duty
to feed their hunger to be shown what can be without being critical of where
they are right now. Feeding the hunger
to encourage others instead of feeding the desire to be critical is vital to
being healthy in my congress with others.
In this, I can show love to others and work at becoming
unoffendable. I may even be able to switch
the oil and glue.
Wishing you joy in the journey,
Aramis Thorn
Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every
writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a
homeowner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure
store.”
(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Contacts for Aramis
Thorn:
#aramisthorn
Bookings: aramisthorn@aramisthorn.com
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