Unrelated Events

Today I had a meeting with one of my grad students and he wasn't very happy. When he started to explain things, he said "you and I haven't really had a conversation since before I got here." My mind immediately jumped to about 8 different conversations that we've had in the last month alone, but wisely I kept my mouth shut. I know we've had lots of conversations, but obviously my student hasn't felt like that, and this is his reality we were talking about, not mine. So to him, we haven't had any. As he kept talking I began to understand that what he meant was that we hadn't talked about what was troubling him about our program and how he fit into it. This is something that's been huge for him for about a year now, and I'd had no clue. He had never talked to me about it before, and I had no idea these things were going on with him. Now I knew and could start to help him. He talked and talked, and at the end we had some potential solutions in place and he said he felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. I don't think the solutions mattered to him quite as much as just having somebody listen to him for a while.

It is much easier for me to be a better advisor than a wife or parent. It is easier for me to listen, to elicit what is going on for other people, and to place my ego aside and focus on the students and their ideas. On their problems, difficulties, triumphs, or epiphanies. It's my job, and 90% of what a good teacher should do is elicit, not tell.

However, if Jake had said something like that, something that struck me as patently false and maybe a little accusatory, would I have been able to keep quiet and refrain from correcting him? Maybe not...so one lesson for me is to learn how to take the skills I'm developing as an advisor and a teacher and use them as a spouse and a parent. Most of all I want to be able to listen to what is happening to Nora and Milo, to hear how they're feeling or thinking about something, and just accept what they say as their reality, no matter what I might think about it. One of the most powerful things my own mother was always able to do as a parent was listen and really hear me, and then empathize.

Now for the unrelated event, tonight I came home and started looking at a book with Milo. Jake said "turn to the page where there is a baby sticking his tongue out. Milo will point to the baby and stick his own tongue out." So I turned to that page, and sure enough, he did! I thought that was pretty impressive. Nora is saying something a lot like "hi" these days, and Milo is saying something that approximates "all done." Both babies wave now, and the twin whisperer swears that they can tell her a cow says "mooo", although I haven't seen that myself.