“Can I just send my students to you?”
I don’t know anyone in my profession who hasn’t heard a question like that.
I was surprised to hear it from another teacher, however.
I was trying to make nice with colleagues from across the campus at the request of my friend Ken, who’d organized a meet up in an attempt to get us to know and love each other (Ken talked about “networking,” but that word makes my ass twitch, so I had to pretend that’s not what I was doing).
A man from our nursing school in Sac asked me what I do. Well, among other things, I teach Writing in Health Science.
My colleague thought that was great, and said his nursing students definitely needed instruction like that. I talked about our workshops and our classes. He said his students didn’t have time for those.
“Can I just send my students to you?”
As soon as I made it clear that I wouldn’t be taking on free individualized writing instruction for all of his students, in the same way that he was unlikely to take on free individualized healthcare for all of my students, he wandered off to network with someone else, and my ass was left twitching in irritation.
This kind of thing happens all the time. Students and former students often want my editorial skills–so do some of my writer friends (cause writer friends always help other writer friends)–but at least they have a right to ask. And they know how to ask (usually) because they understand the value of what they’re asking for.
The students I teach, the people I mentor, and the people I love can and do ask. They also understand that sometimes I can’t help them for some reason or another.
Unpaid labor, though, is much on my mind these days, due to some disagreements about pay that the university and I (& my class of department faculty) are having.
It’s also on my mind as a writer. I wish my friend Chris and I had been in better contact a few years ago, when I was doing a movie blog for someone else–when he came to campus recently for an author talk, he was clear that none of us should ever write “for exposure” (thought we’d need to redo academia and its weird expectations). (The Oatmeal wrote a great short comic about “exposure“–see below.)
And now, the expectation of free labor (you like writing! so you must want to make my shitty writing awesome instead of working on your own awesomeness) has entered my dating life.
A couple of months ago, I got bombarded by messages from a young man while I was in Oxford. He’s in his late twenties, and I don’t think we have anything in common. He wasn’t able to convince me that we did–every message was just a different way of saying he really liked me and that he wanted to be my lover.
I declined to give him my phone number, despite his repeated attempts.
He disappeared for a couple of months, but then reappeared, with the same bland, general declarations of devotion, not bothered in the least by the fact that we’d never talked about anything other than the fact that I wasn’t interested and that he was.
“I don’t want to date you.”
“Ok. Can I call u?”
Sigh.
Several weeks later, which happened to be today, I got this message:
“hi how are you? I need help proofreading my thesis paper. Thank you hun :)”
In his defense, he apologized when I explained the various ways in which that message was inappropriate and rude.
So I guess a free writing lesson happened after all.
by The Oatmeal
