As usual this semester, I am encouraging my students to email me if they have questions or would like to stop by for my office hour. Many take my advice, others I don't hear from at all, except toward the end of the semester, when they show up in my office, looking like they just saw a ghost. One such student is "Gary". Gary has been in contact with me at least once a week. He is a good student, he's gregarious and really likes to chat after class. He likes to email me about questions concerning the readings, cultural misunderstandings he goes through, writing issues, the list really is endless. He's a communicator. I like that.
He emailed me last week to let me know that he let me down and that he felt terrible about it when he couldn't answer a question concerning analytical ideas in class. That's when he dropped this interesting phrase. "Professor, I don't want to let you down, I like you. Actually, I love you. I love you a lot. I want you to know". Hmmmm....now a phrase like that would get most people thinking what is going on here?
Not me, this is normal language stuff. Happens to me all the time. When people are learning a language and have not acquired it, they tend to write things that would normally raise eyebrows. The problem is, my eyebrows cannot be raised anymore, I've heard it all.
I emailed him back "Hi Gary, thanks for the email. I appreciate that you feel that you did not perform to the best of your ability yesterday in class. Remember, we are learning and this is part of the learning process.
Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to teach the material well.
I hit send and sit back and think of all the dumb and slightly psychotic sentences I have stitched together and let them sail out of my big mouth. I laugh to myself and think, hey, this is language!
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