Talking to Professors
A page within Oral History Program
Think about the academic component of college life: coursework, homework, exams, and tutoring might come to mind? But what about the people who teach college students? In this post, we’re featuring recollections from the “College Life” oral history project that highlight another essential component of college life: forming effective working relationships – and sometimes even longer-term connections – with instructors. In honor of FYS 100’s Week 4 theme, “Talking to Your Professors,” we’ve assembled stories about professors who surprised students by having more complex personalities than originally assumed, whose mentorship made a difference, and who created informal after-class Q & A sessions. The transition from high school to college can create new sets of challenges: academic ones, social ones, and ones related to personal and professional growth. The oral history excerpts we’ve assembled highlight cases where forming working relationships with professors helped interviewees alleviate some of these college-related difficulties. Some could still recall a favorite professor by name.
Professors As Multifaceted Personalities
As college students move from large first-year courses to upper-level courses in their majors, minors, and concentrations, their sense of the person doing the grading can change – sometimes significantly. Listening to Wayne describe a few examples of what he remembers about Geography and History faculty he took courses with in the 1970s illustrates their multifaceted personalities.
Wayne (first year: 1973)
How Professors Made A Difference
Looking back on working relationships with their instructors, interviewees explained how they came to see them as people who made them think differently about the purpose of college (Ashlyn), mentored their budding career interests (Alex), helped them think much more deeply about course content and projects (Aliyah), and kept them going by not giving up on them (Harry).
Ashlyn (first year: 2018)
Alex (first year: 2011)
Aliyah (first year: 2016)
Harry (first year: 1985)
Talking To Professors Before The “Email Me!” Era
In the 2020s, professors and students frequently use email to communicate with each other. Students are also often urged to make the trek to instructors’ offices for the academic ritual of office hours. But Michelle, who attended UWL briefly in 1982 and then again from 1990 - 1993, describes an alternate form of communication that sometimes kind of organically emerged at the end of class meetings: professors creating an informal Q & A session by talking with students waiting in line to speak with them.
Michelle (first year: 1990)
Production credits: writing by Shaylin Crack and Tiffany Trimmer, research and conceptualization by Shaylin Crack, web design by Olivia Steil, collection processing by Shaylin Crack, Julia Milne, and Isaac Wegner.
