Student Spin

My students are spinning me. And, I'm not alone. They are spinning other faculty, too. It goes like this:
"You are going to love my paper."
"Wow, I really aced that exam!"
"We had a great time studying--and we really learned our stuff!"
"I have more in my head now than I ever had."
"This paper was so fun to write."
They are spinning us. They are establishing a context for our reading of their papers and exams.

As my friend and colleague, Geoff, said, "It's not surprising since education is a commodity...they are just managing their reputations." I added, "which is what we learned to do in graduate school."

So, student branding: the A student, the hard worker, the engaged intellectual, the frat boy who pulls it out in the end. They are managing their brands in order to insure their success as marketable commodities.

Differently put, the commodity function is morphing and extending. They recognize that they consume education so that they can market themselves. The students are as much commodities--actually, brands--as are the courses. And, since they are brands, they need to manarge their reputations, create the proper market environment for their reception.

Comments

[khalid mir]

Jodi, give them Russell's 'Useless Knowledge' to read!

[The Junky's Wife]

That's scary. I taught before leaving academia to become a writer full time...It's pretty interesting that you interpret it as "spinning." I never thought of it that way, but it definitely happens. I think I might have done it a bit as a student, too. I wanted, early on, for it to be clear that I was among the "smart" kids...that instructors could count on me to have my work done, well, on time...and instead of just turning in said quality work on time, I'd find ways to interact with them and make it clear that we were on the same team. Yuck.

[patrick j. mullins]

'and instead of just turning in said quality work on time, I'd find ways to interact with them and make it clear that we were on the same team.'

That's normal enough self-promotion. I've done plenty of Teacher's Pet Syndromes, and just as many Teacher's Enemy Syndromes, so I'm not sure it's that serious. Flattery is rampant, but Aesop told us 'Flatterers are not to be trusted.' I don't know who said 'Flattery will get you everywhere', but Diana Vreeland believed it (and it didn't always work--everybody could see she was a dragon..)

[Andrew]

Instructors are managers, the classroom the shop floor. Teachers wield the hire/fire, promote/demote baton while students work what angles and gain what leverage they can. To get by, or perhaps even to excel.

Perfectly natural.

Good managers commiserate with the workers about the assholes in "head office," while instructors teach Althusser and hope for Good (academic) Subjects with Good Attendance.

There is a relationship of power/control between instructor and student; it seems liberal, in the most naive sense, to somehow expect the student to "just be natural" and not to "spin" things or "play the game."

[Jodi]

Andrew--I don't know what you mean by liberal here (or natural, for that matter, how in the world would natural be the opposite of spin?). What I noticed is a change--the spinning was new in my experience. I hadn't done it as a student and hadn't had students do it in 12-15 years of teaching (it depends on how you count it).

I also think the power relationships are more complex than your brief gesture implies.

[patrick j. mullins]

'I hadn't done it as a student and hadn't had students do it in 12-15 years of teaching (it depends on how you count it).'

I think I know what you mean now--yeah, I didn't do that either, never tried to pass off work as anything other than itself. My vice was to flirt with many teachers and get too intimate with them, but I think you are talking about trying to manipulate reactions to the hard-copy work. No--even my Prodigal-Son ethics don't allow that sort of thing, even if I've sometimes reacted afterwards, as is well-known....

[Rachel]

I'm a student in the UK and I've told a couple of the lecturers, whose classes I prepared I appreciated their class and I enjoyed the reading a great deal. It was because I did genuinely think that the classes were great and I wanted them to know that. I wasn't trying to get them to increase my grades (I don't think that it would work anyway TBH). Though I'm a little concerned that that's what it sounded like now - I wish I'd waited until after the results to tell them!