I work weird hours. Often, I will take some papers to my local Buffalo Wild Wings to grade on a Monday night. Okay, it used to be Tuesday nights, because Tuesdays are wing night, and Michigan beers are $1 off, but this semester, I have three lab sections on Tuesday and…because Football.
Ladies, if you want people to talk to you in bars, take a stack of papers to grade. People find this fascinating. I think if men do this, nobody bats an eyelash, but a woman who sips a beer in public while grading papers is coming out of the closet.
I often have people say, “I wish I’d had a teacher like you.”
And I answer, “You did.”
Every teacher I know (whatever level) does it. Honestly, parents, if you think your kid’s teacher doesn’t have a glass of wine handy when she’s grading papers off the clock, you’re kidding yourselves.
Easy, parental units…we’re not getting hammered. But if I’m spending my Monday night grading papers, I have a right (nay, obligation) to have an adult beverage and maybe eat some dinner while I do it. This way, I can correct the same error 100 (and no, I’m not exaggerating) times without getting angry. My comments contain 50% less extraneous punctuation if I am grading at my dining room table or a bar than in my office.
But like I said, it gives random dudes an easy opening line, should they find me cute. Or, perhaps more realistically, should they find themselves away from home (and usually their wives) for the night and bored. Gentlemen, a word of advice: choose that opening line carefully. You have no idea how well I can read you based on those first few words.
WHAT NOT TO SAY:
“Are you doing homework?
Nothing to see here, folks. Moving on. <crickets>
“Are you grading papers?”
Dude. I’m holding a red pen. I am going through a stack of papers. What the FUCK do you think I’m doing?
”Are you a teacher?”
See above.
“Where do you teach?”
This implies that, based on my appearance, you can’t tell if I am smart enough or old enough to teach at the college level, and I’m not frumpy enough to teach high school. (Or at least you hope so…you really don’t want me to be a high school teacher because high school teachers aren’t sexy, no matter how much we want them to be.) Let’s be honest – you’re hoping I will answer “_____ Elementary.” Because El-Ed majors are usually sweet, cute, and frankly, not smarter than you.
”Where do you teach?” askers are almost certain to follow up with…
”You look too young to be a professor.”
or, alternately:
”So…that means you have a Ph.D.?”
Which is followed by:
”You look too young to have a Ph.D.”
Look, asshole. I work at a general-admission state school. I could teach here with a Master’s degree, but for the sake of argument, to be a Visiting Professor or tenure-track Assistant Professor I need a Ph.D. I got my Ph.D. at age 28. This is not unusual. Actually, I SHOULD have gotten my Ph.D. at age 26, had things gone according to the original plan. That means my spinster ass has been “old enough to be a professor” FOR A FUCKING DECADE.
Okay, so I don’t look my age. Are you saying I don’t even look 26? I want to look young. I don’t want to look 20. You are vastly underestimating me as a woman and, shit, as a human being.
But what I actually say to any of the above is, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
<crickets>
WHAT TO SAY:
”What do you teach?”
This is a safe question. It gives you an opportunity to a) collect more information before embarrassing yourself and b) possibly establish a mutual interest. If b), it really doesn’t matter what level I teach, does it? See? Good question.
Extra credit: I will usually answer this question with, “I teach Chemistry at <insert name of local college>.” See how much useful information a well-chosen but simple question can provide? Even if I don’t specify the school, naming a subject rather than a grade at least clues the listener in to the fact that I probably have at least one degree in that topic, and you don’t want to engage me in a conversation about it unless you are actually interested.
WHAT NOT TO SAY:
”Oh, man, chemistry. I was AWFUL at chemistry, but I had a really bad teacher.”
-or-
“Chemistry, huh? Wow, you’re smart.”
My response to either of the above will be, “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
<crickets>
But…
WHAT TO SAY:
”Oh, wow, chemistry. I was awful at that, but luckily I found I was really good at <insert favorite hobby or skill here>”
”Yeah? So what do you do?”
See, if you start off on the offensive about what I do, you’re going to have to pique my interest to get me to reciprocate what is, in reality, a simple small-talk question. Had you just started with “What do you do?” we could have avoided all of this nonsense, but the world is never so simple.
(The reader will notice that I have left out the possible response of, “Really? I always LOVED chemistry” because this happens so infrequently as to be statistically insignificant. As my favorite professor once said, “Nobody goes into chemistry to go over well at cocktail parties.”)
I HATE small-talk. But I will play by the rules if you are polite, interesting, and I enjoy talking to you even a little bit. I am polite, and friendly. Downright gregarious in most social situations. But I am old and wise enough to be beyond tolerating inanity for the sake of a free beer and an hour’s company.
So I guess what I’m saying is…gents, if you want to talk to me or buy me a beer, perhaps start by noticing my despair over the fact that the Redskins are pissing the game away, and then ask me why I care. This is a much more interesting topic of conversation, and, perhaps more importantly, infinitely less likely to piss me off.
Because the ‘Skins suck. If you tell me how we need to fire Shanahan and start Cousins and holy CRAP how old is Moss at this point?!?, now we have something to talk about.
But so help me, if you follow this up with, “So what brought you here? School?” I will CUT you.
