26 January 2020

The Hunger We Feed ~ Oil and Glue


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 ͡°)

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