*culture is not optional

Cryin?, cheatin?, and leavin?

Comp 101 as a country song

by Jeremy Huggins

I sit at my homemade desk in my homely apartment and complain to no one in particular: ?Why should I be up at 2:30 a.m. commenting on my students? personal essays? What?s the harm in waiting another day? I already get them their papers back faster than most of the TA?s I know.? 30 minutes and half a paper later, I watch the minute hand on my antique wall clock stand upright: 3:00, Country Standard Time. If you hear 3 a.m. mentioned in a song, it?s likely country, and the singer has likely been crying, cheated on, or both, in no particular order. He has considered leaving, and he doesn?t know where he?ll go, but that?s of no concern at this hour.

What is of concern at this hour is that I?ve got eight papers left, and at an average of 45 minutes per paper, I?m not sleeping tonight. I want to yell out, to sing the blues, but if you sing the blues and no one hears it, is it really the blues?

I decide that I need music to keep me awake. I scan FM, but everything feels so canned and shallow, and half the stations are contemporary, either country or Christian, and that will only add anger to my frustration. So I switch to AM and some real blues: 78 recordings of old gospel tunes. The gospel tunes, whose complaints were aired before

its listeners but toward God, birthed the blues, whose singers still complained, and even though their complaints weren?t always aimed at the ears of the Almighty, they were giving structure to their complaints so that others could join along?essentially, the blues were a music of empathy. Now there?s country, and its singers complain?no, make that bitch and moan?for the sake of mere complaint, because they find it amusing, because, ultimately, it sells, and so many people are buying.

My students need the gospel, or even the blues?heck, I?d be glad just to get them to quit listening to Z94 The Chaw, or whatever country stations they listen to. The music?s seeping into the classroom. In two quarters of teaching Comp 101 at the university, I?ve had several students cry, a few cheat, and one leave. Why? Among other things, they need someone to model the blues for them, to tune into their frequency and sing gospel. They need empathy. This is what I do.

My first crier approached me after class three weeks into my first quarter. Her friend, she said, made a 3.9 on her paper, and she, the crier, made only a 3.8. She was, in modern country lingo, crying a river of tears. I gave her a tissue from my backpack and had her follow me to my office. I?ve cried over a 3.8 before, but they were tears of joy. With her, there was the issue of competition, to be sure, as with so many students, but I figured there was more behind the crying than the competing.

There?s always a problem behind the problem. I knew better than to think that a 3.8 was the only issue here. So I empathized with her as college student: ?How?s your first few weeks of school been? There?s so much to do, I imagine it?s pretty stressful. Is it what you expected?? She looked up directly at me for the first time and responded with something close to what I expected: ?Oh, my gosh. My husband and I have been married for three weeks and his parents are mad at us and our house is a mess and he just lost his job and I don?t know how we?re going to pay the mortgage and . . . .? The blues. For some reason, whether former teachers or societal expectations or something else, she felt compelled to silence herself, to label her troubles as minor, to dampen her heartstrings. She thought it puerile to approach her comp teacher with the troubles she?s seen.

I?ve had one crier since, this one prompted by a missed assignment. Behind the missed assignment, an image problem, and insecurity. I invited her to talk, and we did, for a long time, and she left, not necessarily feeling any better about her image, but confident that she had the freedom to approach me, to make mistakes in the writing she presented me, to fall short in some of the processes of writing for the sake of learning. She needed empathy, not a teacher complaining for the sake of complaining.

College students cry. Sometimes it?s from homesickness, sometimes stress, but whatever it is, it?s usually legitimate, and part of being a teacher means being empathetic, willing to sit with a student and express concern for him as a human. There?s no room in a true university setting for those who would ridicule a student for crying, unless, of course, those people have been hired to impart facts alone. And facts are good, but divorced from human existence, and from, dare I say truth, all that we can expect facts to produce are robots, producers of hillbilly Muzak.

It?s 5 a.m. now, and I?d like just to slap a grade on the rest of the papers and be done with it. But that would be cheating. The work I put into commenting on their papers, above all else, is what I, as an experienced writer, have to offer. Were I to shortcut here, I would cheat them out of an education that they pay to receive and that I?m paid to provide. Were I to cheat in this, however, it would be a result not of malice, but of weariness, of burden.

So, then, do I privilege my students with the benefit of the doubt: If they cheat, or I see them on the way to cheating, I want to know first what burdens they?re shouldering to depress their integrity enough to consider this infidelity. Surely some students cheat to impress a significant other or to earn respect from friends, or maybe just for the thrill of it, but even these, in their own ways, are burdens, and I, as their teacher, need first to listen.

One of my students last quarter was trying to cheat on her in-class essay for the midterm portfolio. She hadn?t actually ?cheated? yet when I figured it out, so I decided to extend empathy before sanction. Before indicting her for a potential infraction, I asked about her social life, her grades, her parents? expectations, only to let her know that I cared, and that I were willing to take the time to help her did she need it. She needed it.

I?m convinced that a majority of the cheating that occurs in college classrooms could be mitigated were the students convinced that their teachers were willing to take time to help them shoulder their burdens, even if that meant simply asking questions and listening compassionately. Some students ask only for an audience for their blues. When they feel like no one?s listening, that no one cares, they feel they can?t get on alone, so they release the pressure with an easy cheat, and as every blues singer knows, cheatin?, caught or not, always has consequences.

This student decided to leave my class. Maybe she was embarrassed, or maybe she didn?t believe that my offer was unattached to any strings. Maybe she had had people offer help in the past and not come through. Maybe she just needed to take one less class. Who knows why some students leave? As long as they know that I care, then I?m hitting the right chords, and what it comes down to then is whether they like the music. Most of them do, a few don?t, and there ain?t nothin? to be done about that.

So I decide not to cheat on commenting on their essays. The sun is rising, and my students will ask me in 4 hours why I look like I slept on a park bench. I?ll say, ?Because I love you so much,? and then I?ll laugh to cut the awkwardness, and they?ll laugh in turn, but what they don?t know is that behind my little joke, I mean it. That the reason I spend so much time on their papers is that the papers are their songs to me, their lyrics composed often amid stress and suffering and burden. They?re singing, for God?s sake, whether they realize it or not, and they need an audience, someone to say ?Amen? and ?Preach it, sister.? Someone to communicate, ?If my saying ?I care? don?t convince you, then look at my park-bench eyes, look at my cramped hands. You?re still off-key at times, unfocused and undeveloped and slightly unorganized, but you?re singing, and I wanna hear it.? And when they get their papers back quickly, they?re that much more convinced that I mean it, that I care, that there?s no need for cryin?, no need for cheatin?, no need for leavin?. And that?s gospel in my classroom.