One aspect of my job that I really hate is that students come to my office to weep. It is very stressful to me and I believe that it is unfair that I have to be exposed to this. I’ve had to sit through a steady stream of weeping people passing through my office today and I’m completely drained emotionally.
I’m sorry but if a person made 165 mistakes in a 6-page essay forcing me to spend 2 hours and 50 minutes grading it, no amount of weeping will convince me to change the grade.
I now realize that there is a reason why psychoanalysts charge so much for their services. Being used as a dumping ground for people’s uncontrollable emotions is the hardest, most exhausting work I have ever done.
I still have one more class to teach and a stack of exams to grade today but I’m shaking uncontrollably and feel ready to burst into tears at any time myself.
Clarissa's Blog 
After long experience I refuse to allow students to vent their emotions in my office. I quietly ask them to leave and to return when they are capable of rational discourse. I have not had many such experiences – more in the US than in England, where individuals are expected to hold themselves together. it seems as though your university must pander to such behavior. That is good for no one. What manner of men and women are they going to be and who would ever want to employ such weak vessels? It sounds as though the kindergarten rather than the university is where they truly belong.
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I know! We all have emotions but I believe it is our duty not to inflict them onto people in a professional setting. It is my job to correct their mistakes and assign grades and I shouldn’t be punished for that.
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In fact, learning that might be a good for all our students – part of ‘enhancing their graduate employability’ – bosses of the future would appreciate a less weepy stream of employees, I’m sure.
It’s very frustrating how ‘catching’ these emotionaly outbursts can be, especially for relatively intraverted types like most professors. I am in the UK so subject to a lot less of this than the average US-ian seems to be, but being female, not-good-at-scary and known to have tissues in my office (I have allergies…) I get more than my share of what there is around in the department
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Maybe I should start wearing a tail and horns to look scarier.
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I hear you. Week 9 of the semester and no one has wept in my office so far. This is a new record in my case (usually, people come weeping around week 4-5). I do not know whether to consider my self lucky, however. I seems that this semester I have some angry, passive-agressive students instead. What is worse?
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Like Comrade Stalin used to say when asked whether the deviation from the Party course to the left was worse than the deviation to the right, “They are both worse!” 🙂
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What a great line!
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Wow, I had no idea. Do you know, do other professors have to deal with a similar amount of emotional dumping?
(I am now trying to remember if I have ever done this to a professor. I don’t think I have, even though I went through both the onset, which was very scary because I didn’t know what was happening to me, and the worst part of my depression while I was at college. I did see a professor about something related to this — I asked to retake a test I had bombed for depression-related reasons; I think I managed to stay on an even keel with her, though. And, of course, when I failed to do well even on the second attempt at the test, I accepted this. But it had never occurred to me that professors might get lots of anguished visits from students in various states of emotional crisis — that’s the thing, when you are in such a state you forget to consider anything about other people beyond the help they can offer you. And, of course, it never occurs to you that your crisis is anything but uniquely catastrophic.)
But I totally agree that it’s not fair for students to do this, even if they are deep in the throes of acute mental illness.
I think Charles’s method, of quietly asking students to leave and return when they are capable of rational discourse, is a good one. I think it would’ve had the desired effect on me, if I had started crying in a professor’s office and the professor said that to me.
That might depend on what the student’s attitude toward their own crying is, though. With me it was always, “Why am I crying? Why can’t I stop? This is terrible!” and wanting very much to be able to stop, and thus willing to cooperate with another person’s desire that I stop; I also felt shame about being unable to stop, and about having started to cry in the first place. If the person feels like you, the professor, have made them cry by your inordinate meanness, they might not feel any compunction against crying in your presence, and may indeed feel justified in doing so.
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“Do you know, do other professors have to deal with a similar amount of emotional dumping?”
– I will ask around. I’m a very tough grader, especially on essays. They all cry at first but they improve their writing dramatically by the end of the semester. If only it could all be done without tantrums and emotional outbursts.
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The crying is actually easier than the passive aggressive b.s., I find. But emotional dumping ground, yes. I was not cut out for geriatric or mental health caretaking and this is what students seem to expect now. Just today I was about to go down the stairs and one flagged me over from the elevator, her foot hurt and the health center didn’t think it was a disability, could I get a key and activate the elevator for her. On another day I might have but I was on my way out stairs to an appointment, actually for a problem with my own foot, and I just didn’t really believe her, for one thing, or feel as though it were my job to mop up everything for everyone.
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P.S. said student was about 18. When I say geriatric caretaking I do not mean my students are old, it is just that they seem either really old or else sort of like toddlers in terms of all the care and aid they need.
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p.s. I should also have said toddler care, although I am better at that; somehow it really irritates me when people above toddler age need it, though.
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I had a passive-aggressive student twitch her shoulder, roll her eyes and sigh in exasperation at me last week in my office. Only I know what it cost me to remain calm, professional and open to a conversation with her. The reason for her aggravation was that I dared to give this princess a B.
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All of my problematic ones are in Spanish 3. I wish we had a program with program goals. They come to Spanish 3 having gotten As but never having formulated a sentence on their own, either in writing or orally. It is hard to know what to do since Spanish 4 is next, they have to start sometime, but their concern is not learning Spanish but getting As for graduate school applications. They want a way to get an A without learning to produce Spanish or understand it reading except in Wikipedia.
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I used to think it was a shame to weep in public. It was a sign that something aggravating had really got through to you. Now I think it doesn’t matter so much. I wouldn’t do it to be manipulative, though. That’s not my way. I remember in the workplace bullying situation we had, tears were quite a common occurrence after a while. It was cynically said that when they broke me down I was crying to be manipulative, but that was far from true. It was actually frustration and bottled up rage.
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If a friend, an acquaintance or even a stranger cries, I always know how to comfort them. I actually met one of my closest friends when she was weeping in a toilet and I comforted her. But in a professional setting, I believe this is completely misplaced. At work, I need to concentrate on doing my job, not on responding to people’s emotional outbursts.
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I agree. The crying thing at work is more than weird.
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I find it amazing that a student would ever go to a lecturer or tutor’s office to cry about a grade and try to get it changed. If I ever receive such a bad mark, I do go see my lecturer, but only to work through how it went so badly and to discuss the next assignment, making sure it doesn’t happen again! I don’t know if this is because my mum’s a teacher, but I would feel so guilty if I ever subjected a lecturer to me crying over a grade. It seems terribly rude and unprofessional, when really I should have been that invested in the paper before submitting it, not just when I got a bad mark. Weeping over essays is best done with friends at the uni bar, not with a supervisor.
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