First week teaching at Rasmussen is in the books. So far, I’ve been surprised about how well it’s gone. The full-time English professor there—as well as friends and acquaintances who work, or have worked, for Rasmussen—had warned me about what to expect: teaching there’s a challenge, it’ll take some getting used to. I was advised on how to handle both the school’s protocol and potential issues with students that could arise. I welcomed the warnings and the advice; however, all of this information sent the mercury in my anxietometer bursting through its glass casing.
I started having first-day-of-class nightmares, the ones where I show up to class and find that I haven’t written a syllabus, I’m unable to think of anything to say, and none of the students are willing to take me serious. That led to lack of sleep, which caused a major dip in my productivity, and then I became convinced the nightmares would play out in real life.
Since I began teaching I’ve gotten the first day jitters each semester. Sometimes they go away before class starts, other times they’ve receded as I commenced with taking attendance and reading the syllabus. The worst I ever had them was the first day teaching my own section of English Comp, fall of my second year at MSU. I had been stressing out because I would be teaching a class predominantly made up of freshmen at10:00 am, beginning on a Monday. Which meant that for some—if not most, or even all—of these students, I would be the first college instructor they’d be encountering, EVER.
If that doesn’t scare the shit right out of you, then you probably enjoy watching puppies being drowned by the sackful. Because 1.) I hadn’t had much experience teaching (two or three times leading a class as an intern, maybe two teaching demonstrations), and 2.) these kids (or, more likely, their parents) were paying a lot of money for me to gain on-the-job training.
I was psyching myself out of a limited (not every grad student got a Teaching Assistantship) and very necessary (if I wanted to pursue a career in teaching) opportunity. In an attempt to snap me out of this nervous funk, I kept reminding myself of these key points. But that didn’t work. If anything, it made me more anxious.
The morning of my first class, I arrived to the room and found nearly all of my students standing in the hall, waiting for me to let them in. It felt as though they were all looking down on me; none of them, it seemed, were shorter than six-five. So I fumbled for my key card and without looking up to check the time, I unlocked the classroom. The door swung wide open, giving my students and me a clear view of the previous class still in session.
The Instructor in this class, along with her students, stopped whatever it was they had been doing and gave me the kind of slack-jawed stare reserved for perverts who like to crash brisses. I apologized, began closing the door, apologized again before the door hit the jamb, and turned to face an entire class of Power Forwards. I didn’t try to crack a joke, make a face, or anything else that might have cut the tension of that moment. I did the only thing that seemed right at that moment: I went to my office.
It was just down the hall, not more than thirty feet away, within view of the classroom. Keys already in hand, I went to work at the lock. The jitters, however, had taken full effect. My palm was sweaty and my hand shook like a jackhammer. The first key didn’t work, neither did the second. Then my second attempt with the first key failed, and I almost dropped the whole set. I turned my head to see the students in the hallway still looking at me. Their stares seemed to slice through me, circumcising me at the neck. I felt my chin fall to my chest, my head detach from my body and roll behind a nearby trash bin.
The next few seconds were a blur, but somehow I was able to pick my head up, find the right key, and enter the sweet sanctuary of the English Teaching Assistant’s office. There I chuckled about what had just happened, which allowed me to take a deep breath and steady my nerves. I took another minute before going back out into the hall, finding that my students weren’t giants and that they really weren’t intimidating at all. The first day of class was a breeze after that.
In the semesters that followed, I’d still get jittery on the first day and telling myself that story wouldn’t necessarily work in calming me down. I’d get to class feeling nervous and think, “This is the day I’m going to completely shut down in front of my students.” But that feeling would soon pass once I took attendance.
This past Tuesday, however, I was a major wreck. It seemed like I was missing something from my materials, or even some understanding of what was expected of me as a teacher at this school with which I’m not completely familiar. I could have sworn I was forgetting something so basic and obvious that simply showing up to campus would make me look like the world’s biggest fool. So when I arrived to campus, I made sure I was wearing pants before stepping out of my car. They were on, and they were zipped up. No visible stains in or around the crotch: we were good to go.
And when I entered the building, I was completely calm. My heart rate seemed normal, it didn’t feel like my limbs were filled with air to the point of shaking: I wasn’t nervous. Same went for being in the classroom, talking to my new set of students. I could feel my confidence level increasing with each passing minute. The students helped, I think. They were nothing like what I had expected (in terms of attentiveness and professionalism), based on what I had been told by the full-timer. But that’s not the only reason I didn’t have the jitters.
I think I’m reaching a point where I’m confident in my ability to speak and share knowledge in front of people, without fear that someone’s going to call me out on my bullshit. Not that what I thought I was teaching was bullshit; rather, I feared that if someone tried to contest an idea I was sharing, I wouldn’t be able to justify its validity. But I realized that I am perfectly capable of justifying my ideas and that the classroom is the perfect place to discuss, work through, or explore alternatives to those ideas when someone is having difficulties—for whatever reason—grasping them. There’s no need for me to worry about something as trite as public speaking, especially since I know what I’m doing. I got this shit down.
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