Everyone has had a crush on one of their professors or teachers. You can't really help it sometimes. You go to class a few times a week and this brilliant person is up front performing, doing what they do best. That's always attractive. That's why I think musicians and actors are so attractive. There is something magical about watching a person get absorbed in their art or passion. Especially when that person does it well, or better, when they excel. Something about their passion absorbs the observers, and we get to come into their world to experience the beauty in their minds, hearts, souls. And then we can walk away having gained something or, occaisionally it may even change us. Maybe we learn how to look at the mundane in such a way that we can see it for the miracle it really is.
The process breeds intimacy on the part of the viewer. The performer has bled her passions for you, so you too can feel the excitement and wonder that she feels. Members of the audience naturally form emotional attachments to the performers whose blood resonates more deeply with their own. Anyone who acts as a catalyst for another person's phenomenal change gets associated with that phenomal event. The musician who can take his listener to the 'white peaks of the sublime' to experience the rapture in some divine musical work, often gets associated with the rapture felt by that listener. We fall in love with writers whose books touch us emotionally, the actors who express something in our own inner lives, the rock singer who comforts our personal turmoil....
Unless it's just lust because they are totally hot.
Teachers are performers. Many professors create character personas that they don just for their classes. I believe academics are artists. They have to have the same indefatiguable passion to survive and succeed. I think this is how the student crush happens.
Unless, of course, your professor is sex on a stick yumilicious. Having been a student for many years, I have experienced the student crush in varying degrees. So, it is interesting to now be on the other side of the lecturn. The intimacy that develops is completely one-sided. The student feels close to the teacher and feels like they know the teacher, but all I know about my students are their names. To me they are almost strangers. It's a little bit creepy having people who are practically strangers act like they have a crush on you.
With my few semesters of teaching I already have some stories of students acting goofy. Yesterday I wore my hair down for the time first time this year and also wore spring clothes for the first time (much less conservative). And one boy actually came up to me after class and offered to help me grade the exams for my next section. I turned him down politely and then he almost started begging to let me help him. This kid is a repeat-lingerer who often apologizes for asking too many questions. But this was extreme to offer to help me do my work! It would mean him hanging out with me in my office for the hour between my classes.
Then, in my second class of the day, another student stayed after to ask me why I looked so stressed and tired and started trying to console me. He told me how I need to take care of myself and should relax, I don't have to work this hard, etc. He had that, "Oh baby, you don't have to feel like that, you shouldn't do that to yourself, let me make you feel better" kind of sound to what he was saying. You ladies know what I'm talking about. You men might not, unless you do that too. It's a total pick-up game, the 'let me take care of you sweetheart' routine. He even had that concerned, sensitive look on his face. If I wasn't so tired and stressed, I might've laughed out loud at him.
But last semester was the interesting one. Next post: "Don't stand so close to me"
Come back for more TRUE stories of the strange, sad and pathetically hilarious exploits of me not having sex in the city.
