So it would be my bad luck to run into one of our newer faculty members last night, who wanted to go on at me further about how bad the freshmen and sophomores are, and I said:
Look, I understand your feelings and I share them, but this issue is not something I think about outside of class, I have a lot else going on that is more interesting; if you are this miserable and if you are going to allow yourself to be consumed in this way, I really think you need another job; I would be happy to write you a letter and I am sure the chair would; I am not, however, convinced I want to vote for your renewal if it means I am going to have to put up with this kind of totally depressing oratory from you every time I see you.
That knocked him back and he said he was “just venting.” I said, as I always do, vent to the chair; he said, as this type of person always does, oh, I would never tell the chair what I tell you; I said, as I always do, if you wouldn’t tell the chair, don’t tell me. Now I want to know two things:
a) is this “I am so miserable, help me” a Hispanic male seduction strategy I just hadn’t met yet? I’ve had three in a row try it on me. It’s new and it doesn’t make them look very macho, but maybe this is how the señoritos do it, do you think?
b) are all the alleged and so earnest advice and all the exhortations I have gotten – from the Emeritus Professor, from my dissertation director, from my peers in graduate school when they became assistant professors:
…about how terrible everything was, how miserable they were, how you had to toe the line, how you had to be afraid;
…about how I was never going to make it and was riding for a fall;
…about how misguided I was to think I knew what I was doing and could handle things;
…about how if I could handle things it just meant I was a lesser being with coarser sensibilities and fewer needs;
…about how my difficulties were less important, as I lived in a less prestigious state that owed allegiance to their states;
…were they all just venting and spouting? All the things they said in the very most earnest tones were terribly wrong and were, furthermore, not what I had learned in my other classes, and not what the yet more exalted scholars from yet more exalted schools said.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Honey, “Take me home and love me” is a *very* successful pick-up strategy that is not at all incompatible with being macho. Indeed, it goes esp. well with being macho. Haven’t you gone through that teenage right of passage, Mills and Boon romance novels? The Spanish/Italian/Greek hero with flashing dark eyes and smouldering lips — or possibly flahsing lips and smouldering eyes — is a broken soul within that he is too proud and macho to admit to. His defences can only be melted, and his hollow soul fulfilled, by the troo luv of a good English woman.
You’re being hit on, at least in part. Rest assured.
“I understand your feelings and I share them, but this issue is not something I think about outside of class, I have a lot else going on that is more interesting”
-YES!!! Any of us could take the road of dedicating our every waking moment to complaining about the low quality of students. And then, of course, tell everybody how we never have time for anything else because we are such dedicated teachers. As if being a good teacher had anything to do with bitching about students for hours on end.
I also feel like I have a lot going on outside of my Freshman seminar and I;m not willing to dedicate my life to discussing the issues I have there. Since I started teaching this Freshman seminar this semester, I can’t tell you how many people came up to me waiting for me to offer a litany of complaints. They look very disappointed when I say that everything is going well. It is, indeed, going quite well. And if there are problems, I deal with them inside the classroom and when I plan classes.
‘about how if I could handle things it just meant I was a lesser being with coarser sensibilities and fewer needs”
-I had people hinting at the same thing very transparently to me, too. In my case, it’s usually, “well, of course, you are less sensitive because you have autism!”
Yes, I’m one huge sociopath with no human emotion.
@Priyanka – the ones who try this, though, are always way too young or way too fat or something, and the current one is gay. I take it as an insult, as though they thought this were the level of conversation I am capable of (or need to be brought down to, more likely).
You *should* take this as an insult, only I take it as free entertainment. I am a big fan of free entertainment, and I spare my already high BP extra trouble if I can dismissive such pesky annoyances with a condescending grin.