Unchangeable

Before I left my college on the hill this week, I took two of my favorite students out to dinner. They happen not to be my actual students, although one of them did take a class with me earlier this year.

I met both of them through Dr. S and they quickly became two of my favorite people at the college on the hill. One, who hasn't taken a class with me and vows she never will, is going to Denmark next semester. Thus, the dinner had a little bit of the goodbye-for-now tone.

The reason why that student says she won't take a class with me, other than the fact that she might not take any more English classes period, is because it would be, in her words: "a conflict of interest." For her, any friendship between a professor and a student creates such a conflict.

And I totally agree, though I don't perceive that conflict to exist in our case because I'm not her friend. In fact, I'm not a friend to any of my students, period.

I tell every student who asks that, though friendly, friendship as I understand it (the sharing of personal situations, the relying on each other for company and solace, the absolute loyalty and honesty and hard work that friendship in my world implies) is likely not possible until they graduate and are gone from the college on the hill.

"But what if I was a student at Ohio University and I met you, would you be my friend then?" my former student asked, adding that she wanted to understand the limitations of my policy.

"No," I answered. "As long as there is any element of a student-professor relationship, I cannot be your friend. But I can offer you another relationship, that of mentor, and I think that's a very good one, too."

I told them that my advisor, who is younger than I am by several years and whom I admire immensely for helping me craft not only my Monster but also my own mind into its present scholarly mettle, told me early on that he doesn't become friends with his graduate students.

For him, friendship would get in the way of being able to tell it like it is. And he does talk tough when he needs to and I appreciate very much that he does. When things are crap, crap they must be called. I look forward to the time when, with Ph.D. in hand, I can be his friend. But for now, I like and respect our relationship very much.

Although I will always tell my friends the things they might not want to hear, I can't do so in the same way that I can tell a student why s/he is failing my class and what they need to do about it. And while I can, and will, fail a student who deserves it, I would never fail a true friend. That's not what friends do to friends in my world.

Further, and more importantly, while there should be no power differential between friends, even friends of different ages, there always exists a hierarchy between a professor and a student, even if that student is not that professor's student.

Instead of unconditional friendship, I told the students, I offer you a committed mentorship. That's OK, they both said, adding again that they just wanted to understand me.

But I have the feeling that the reason they insist on bringing up this issue may have to do with the fact that they don't see this as I do. That's alright, though, because while I can explain myself until I'm blue in the face, I'm not going to change.

I'm very wary of asymmetries in relationships where power is involved (that's why I teach about and do research on imperialism). Thus, I can't see the student-professor relation in any other way. There is a burden to friendship, of bearing the weight of my personal life, that I could not impose on a student.

In fact, I've realized that this burden of friendship I only place on very, very few people and only when it's inevitable. I've also come to realize that I wouldn't ask others to do what others, including siblings, relatives, friends, and colleagues, have felt free to ask from me. I guess that, like the possibility of friendship between students and professors, a lot has to do with age.

There comes a time, and I've been there for a while, when you don't want to depend on others as much as you did when you were younger. That's when self-reliance and the ability to solve your own problems, as difficult and complicated as they might be, become part of your personal constitution. Of what you take pride of in yourself.

Thus, (income and circumstances permitting) I don't foresee ever asking friends again to do the things I can pay someone else to do, like moving my things or cleaning my house, as I did ask them to do in the past. I work at not involving others (except my poor husband) in solving my major and even minor difficulties.

The pretty immense differential that age creates, I noted to my students as our conversation ended, means a lot more than they give it credit for. The difference of more than 25 years of life and living cannot be ignored. And that's even more so because of the difficulties and obstacles I've surmounted, many of which only my parents and my husband know about.

In some things I am pretty unchangeable. This student-professor-friendship thing is one of those. "Give it up," I told them jokingly. "This is never going to change."

I mean it. I cannot erase those 25-plus years of difference between us. And, truth be told, even if I could, I wouldn't. I like what I've learned and what I've become in that time.