The night before my first day of teaching at Southern Utah University, a single thought caused me enormous amounts of anxiety:
“What if I don’t like teaching?”
Teaching at a university has been my only real plan for the past few years. The opportunity to teach was the main reason why I chose SUU over Columbia and Texas Tech. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that teaching pretty much covers my tuition.
If I didn’t like teaching, what would I do? How would I pay for school? What would I do after I graduated? How would I provide for my family? I was legitimately concerned I wouldn’t enjoy it.
But these thoughts couldn’t have been more wrong.
My first few days of teaching went flawlessly, which caused my anxiety to cease. As I wrap up my first month of teaching, I can honestly say that I have not only loved every minute in the class, but teaching has given me the strength I’ve needed to make significant progress on my thesis and open dialogue with a number of PhD programs. I didn’t think I could be any more blessed!
But I was wrong again.
One thing I didn’t expect to get out of teaching is forging so many connections on an interpersonal level. I mean, I have a class of 45 students, so I figured it would be a long time before I got to know any of them very well, if I even did at all. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. After the first few classes, I already felt like I knew my students fairly well and I wanted to get to know them even better. I found myself coming home from school, not telling Summer about what I learned from my grad courses, but instead what I learned about my students. I began to develop this love and admiration for each and every one of them.
Maybe it’s because I’m a married-with-two-kids grad student, but I haven’t really made a lot of close friends here at SUU. I had big Cal, but he just graduated. I also had my boss, Kyle, but he just got married. So basically, when most of my classmates are going out to socialize, study, drink, party, or whatever it is they do, I would much rather be at home with my girls. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely not ashamed of this. 100 times out of 100, I would choose spending time with my family over anything else. But it also never hurts to expand your social life beyond watching Mickey Mouse Club House with your two-year-old.
And that is the surprise that teaching has given me. I look at every single one of my students as a friend. I care for them all and want them to succeed. I wish I had little brothers to marry every single one of the girls because they are all so sweet and amazing. And most of the guys are the type I would be hanging out with if I didn’t have a family (although I would only find one or two of them suitable to court my hypothetical little sisters).
There is nothing like reading their papers and seeing them succeed. They are all so much smarter than I was as a freshman, and I get a feeling that there are more than a few who are smarter than I am right now.
My number one goal in teaching this class was that my students would enjoy studying Interpersonal Communications as much as I did as an undergrad. I don’t know if they all really are enjoying it, but I don’t think I’m totally failing either. Due to the wonders of social media, I have seen them post things about loving school and doing well on assignments from my class…I even talked with a student’s mom on Facebook! With the exceptions of being a father and serving a mission, I have never done anything more intrinsically rewarding than teaching these students.
So, I guess the purpose of all this was to just say thank you to all my students. Even though I’m only a few years older than them and they treat me like I’m 40, they still have inspired me in ways I could never repay.
Hayden Coombs 