#dear student

[shethanksherluckystars-blog]

Dear Student,

Today you started classes. You’re going to have to get up earlier and stay up later. You’ll have to study harder, and think more critically.

Do it.

Go to your classes. Take good notes. Read your books. Do your homework.

You’ll get invitations—to outings, college events, student organizations, and clubs. Go.

Join a club you’re interested in. Join a club you never thought you’d consider.

Introduce yourself to your classmates and your neighbors. Smile at the people you pass on the sidewalk or in the halls. Invite someone new to join you in the dining hall. Maybe give an old friend a second chance.

You’re going to learn so much about the world, about others, and about yourself.

Try something new. Take that extra class. Take a harder class. Don’t push off your GenEds. Learn something from a completely different discipline. Let yourself grow.

It’s okay you fail; you’ll find a hidden strength.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help. You have so many people to lean on: your classmates, your professors, and a family of alumni.

Take care of yourself. “Hydrate or die-drate.” Eat that bowl of cereal at midnight.

Have fun this year in everything you do—even if it’s pulling an all-nighter to finish putting together a binder for your capstone. Have pride in every assignment, and celebrate every victory—especially the small ones—whether it’s a paper, a performance, or a nightmare of a math equation.

You can do it. We believe in you.

💙, graduate, class of 2017

[professorwizard492]

Pandemic for all

Dear Student,

We are all dealing with the pandemic. Please show grace to everyone.

Your Professor, who is dealing with children virtual learning while she is teaching remotely and moving to a new home.

[muchadoaboutallthethings]

"Dear student

One of our students based at [my location] Campus has been taken ill this week with a confirmed case of bacterial meningitis."

[playonturds]

The fact that Harvard has been sending me college emails is kinda motivating ngl

[lexrhetoricae]

Dear Student,

You cannot claim a film scene is charged with sexuality then neglect to mention the close up of a woman sucking on a cigarette.

Chicks dig metaphors.

[arcthee]

Dear student, I have respect for who you are and who you can become. I want to know you. I have time for you. This classroom is ours, not mine. There is room for what you care about in what we learn. Your peers and I need you here as a partner in learning. I will help you understand yourself and your world though what we learn… Your success is central in this classroom… When one route to learning doesn’t work, we’ll find another. I am your partner in growth. We are on a mission to learn. There is great support for you here but no room for excuses… You’re growing but you’re not finished growing. There is no finish line in learning. - Your teacher

Carol Tomlinson, “Invitation to Learn”

[phdincrohns]

Dear Grad Students....

Let's talk about professionalism for a minute.

So I just unfollowed a professional contact on twitter because of ableist jokes.  I'm not going to link to their profile, but know that they are an established professor.  Since I started grad school at my current university, I've been privy to a barrage of jokes, complaints, and outright animosity toward undergraduate students.  Moving from a relatively small, elite big city research institution to a very large rural one came with all sorts of culture shock, but the difference in faculty culture was perhaps the worst.  Hearing about it in the lunch room is one thing, but the "Dear Student" trend that has spilled over into the digital world is reaching beyond unprofessional into the vicious.  If you're somehow not familiar with Dear Student, here is a prime example at this public Facebook page.  This one happens to be anonymous, but many professors have not even gone so far as to conceal their identities.  The person I just unfollowed was contributing under their real name right on twitter, and they were definitely not the first I've encountered.

As someone in the midst of the long transition between student and teacher, I find Dear Student deeply disturbing on two levels.  On the surface, it angers me because it's highly unprofessional to post personal whinging publicly on a professional use social media account.  Following that fact, because it's public all your students can see it if decided to google you.  If you think they can't find it, you are sorely mistaken a fucking idiot.  And secondly, Dear Student is alienating to all students, but especially disabled students.  Despite what some professors may assume, undergraduates actually do care about what you think of them, and making sweeping, snap judgements about a student's efforts and capabilities damages their trust in you and faculty in general.  Best case scenario, they'll brush it off because they didn't care for your class anyway.  Worse case, you've just informed a disabled person that you think their significant struggles in college are trivial.  And yes, they can most likely figure out if the comment is about them when you get weirdly specific.  Eventually students will stop asking for help when they really need it because they figure their professors don't care, which is perhaps the most unsettling aspect.  Look, speaking from both sides of the student/teacher divide, it takes about five minutes of kindness to become a student's hero for the semester and inspire them to give you their best effort, but that's a chance you'll never get by behaving unprofessionally.

I guess what I'm really trying to say here is, very simply, save the venting for the faculty lounge or your close friends.  Dear Student and related memes aren't cute, aren't funny, aren't edgy, aren't whatever else you think you're accomplishing.  I may be closer to a teacher than a student at this point, but as the future of my field and a disabled person, I'm disappointed that we're using social media for this bullshit.  Fellow grad students, as future mentors, take this as a reminder and a warning to not fall prey to low standards of professionalism in the digital world.

[son-just--dont]

Dear Student:

Look, I appreciate you wearing headphones to watch videos or listen to music, but it is creepy as hell to suddenly hear, out of the silence, a burst of maniacal laughter at whatever it is you're hearing.