Less than two weeks ago, I was a full-time high school teacher, and had been for more than two decades. Although I always teach George Mason University classes during the summer as well as during the regular year, this summer seems different because these students are representative of my future. Now that I have a full-time college job, I will never again teach anyone younger than 19 years old.
Yet my current students resemble high schoolers in unexpected ways. College students are not in my classroom to improve their intellectual lives—they are there to fulfill a requirement, just as my high school students wanted a good grade and college recommendations. College students’ demeanors are more controlled, yet they are just as hurt when they receive criticism. They are adult versions of the adolescent, insecure pranksters I’ve left behind.
Sandra Cisneros’ short story “Eleven” helps me understand these connections. On Rachel’s eleventh birthday, she realizes she is not only eleven, but “ten, nine, eight, seven, six”—just the way middle-aged adults still feel eighteen, somewhere deep down.
In the story Rachel turns eleven, but is humiliated by her teacher and therefore cries, which is the part of her that is three. “Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one.”
Having seen my students grow up, agonize over SATs and college acceptance, get together and break up with significant partners, and sneak out of school for illicit dates with a fast food outlet, I don’t even try to banish their faces as I see the more mature adult faces in my college classes. They are the same, with a few more character lines. Those 22- year-olds are still 18, 15, and six.
Jenni encapsulates the perspective I’ve developed over the years. I taught her at Oakton High School and now, again, at GMU. Mostly I remember her hot pink cell phone. But now she is so much more than “hot pink Jenni.” She is a wonderful writer—someone with self-deprecating humor, intelligence and maturity. What I saw in the chrysalis stage three years ago has taken flight. “And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.”
Even when I have no literal memories of the earlier layers of my students’ onion lives, I can imagine them. I see the dreams that used to be mostly in their heads, now coming to fruition. And I see the insecurities that loomed large before, still lurking beneath the surface. I see a younger Keith with his perfectionism and wicked wit developing, and the determination in Kadija’s eyes that led her out of a war-torn country and into the GMU nursing program.
College students are “smart eleven” because they’re nearly fully formed, adding another layer to their lives. It’s wonderful to see students mature with their earlier selves still visible. My decades teaching younger students have given me the ability to peek at the layers below. In Cisneros’s words, “That’s the way it is.”
Erica Jacobs teaches at George Mason University. Email her at [email protected]
