This is where you belong...

Good: Having someone that I went to High School tell me that I'm a good Professor.
Evil: McAngus Bacon Cheddar Burger.

Since the first day of classes, I was a bit uncomfortable about having someone in my class that I knew personally. This is something that is never encouraged due to all the issues of favoritism that could come up. However, since I hadn't spoken to that person in nearly seventeen years, I did not think it that much of a problem; at least professionally speaking.

My style of teaching is very much driven by interaction with the students. I want them to give me their feedback, their thoughts on a particular topic. I constantly ask them to tell me what they think on various issues that we're discussing hoping that they'll understand the topic more because it's relevant to their own lives. When it comes to someone that I've grown up with - this could be possibly a problem. It's easy for a student to say that they grew up with a person who has done "something" or knew of someone who had "something else" happen to them if they don't know the professor. They're a fairly anonymous face in the crowd as far as that goes. However, when you know that person for years, you know their family - know their history and could easily put two and two together to create a more complete picture of their own childhood.

It goes both ways. I continually use examples from my own childhood to illustrate points in class. Usually the students are nearly fifteen years younger than I am so there's no frame of reference for them. When there's someone in the class who knew me growing up - it's like revealing part of your life to them on a more personal basis. They -knew- what you were like growing up, or knew what kind of kid you were, etc.

Well, all of this was what had been crawling through my head for the past week or so with one student in particular.

Stella is a woman that I met in middle school, I believe. We grew up together having mutual friends but not mutual interests. In the broadest sense of how I felt about her - she was nice. This is a huge difference to the majority of the people I grew up with who I could classify as "will be destroyed when my army of evil robots arrive" or not-nice.

She found me after class last night and wanted to touch base since we've only briefly spoken a word or two within the context of the lecture. The first thing that she said blew me away.

"This is where you belong. You were -meant- to be a professor."

I couldn't stop grinning.

She had heard stories from her co-workers as to how I taught and what kind of professor I was, but she said that she couldn't imagine me as being "that Riley". After three weeks had passed, she was more than impressed.

I don't think my feet touched the ground all the way to the parking lot.

Even now as I type this, I'm grinning once more.

It's good to know that others feel the same way about your career choice. I'm glad that I'm no longer working for the City / Count / State any more. I think that if I had continued working with them I would continue to be an angry, unhealthy person. Here, I can use my skills for what they were meant for.

Notice, I did not say "Use my powers for good".

Change happens slowly.