The Women in the Back of the Room

One of the colleges that sometimes hires me to teach, a for-profit private university, requires its students to take a 6-week introductory course that covers such practical essentials as university policies, how to read a syllabus, and how to use the school's online library. In the course students are also introduced to working in a team environment, writing papers, preparing oral presentations, and performing academic research. I used to teach this course a lot, and I rather enjoyed working with the new, nervous students, which often entailed much babysitting though the majority of students were well into adulthood.

Several years ago one of my students showed up for the first 3 weeks, then disappeared. If he was not straight off the bus from Mexico, he hadn't been in California for long, and though his spoken English was passable, his writing was not so good and I told him that it was something we could work on, something that he would have to spend a lot of time working on himself. He worked as a landscaper during the day, but on class night he was clean and well dressed, and he took notes in a very nice hard-cover book of notepaper. I appreciated his obvious if somewhat reserved enthusiasm, his eagerness.

I never learned why he did not return for the 4th night, though I heard from other students that there was some problem with financial aid. Maybe so. The university is a for-profit institution, and much of its profit comes from financial aid its students obtain.

For several reasons I teach at that university less often than I used to, partially because I now teach at a local community college where the nights are shorter, the academic freedom is greater...and I can sometimes where jeans if I'm feeling particularly sloppy. For the most part, the experience is rewarding; because my classes are at night, many of my students are working adults who take their education seriously enough to show up, to take notes, to do the work, to ask questions. Often, though, there are the students I am suffering now: the young women in the back of the room who giggle, who "talk about girl things" when I am talking, who lean against the wall with their heads in their slender hands and who must wish their parents were not "making them go to school." (Yes, they said that.)

I do not begrudge these women for being in my class, and I am hopeful that they will learn how going to college because someone tells them to might not be the best reason for their presence. I know they are young and I am old, and that they see me as old. If I had started college when I was their age, I probably would have behaved as they do. But I wish I could introduce them to the man who landscaped all day and then spent 4 hours a night with me, because I really liked that guy--respected him. And, too, I wish I had had a chance to tell him how I felt, that he even now personifies the reasons I continue to slog through the papers, the quizzes, the readings, the hours of drudgery I forget every time I encounter someone like him.