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Seven months ago, I received my master’s degree, and just two months later I started my new job as a college professor; and I couldn’t be happier. This was a late-in-life career change for me, but I knew I wanted to impact lives through teaching. For the past several months, I have gone to work with a smile on my face and renewed purpose in my heart. I’m truly doing what I love, and there’s no better feeling.
I teach at a college where many of the students are also making late-in-life pivots. Some of my students are fresh out of high school, in their late 20s, my age (mid-40s), or even older than me. There’s a vast range, but that’s what makes the experience that much sweeter. We all have varied perspectives on life that we can share and utilize to enhance one another.
However, lately, I’m starting to feel more like a target than a professor.
Just yesterday, while on the way down on the elevator, one of my students invited me to dinner at his home. I politely declined, but he went on to tell me how I would be the perfect addition to him and his wife as a throuple. I told him the conversation was inappropriate, and he explained that he would approach me about it again when the semester ended. I hurried off the elevator and dismissed it as a one-time incident that would never happen again.
The previous week, another one of my students asked if we could meet after hours and off the record because he had something he wanted to discuss with me. Again, I declined but offered to meet with him during my office hours. He took me up on the offer and showed up in my office with a troubled look on his face. I questioned him about his perturbed demeanor, and he went on to tell me that he felt like he was falling in love with me. He asked if I believed in love at first sight, and I quickly attempted to divert the conversation, knowing that we were going down a slippery slope.
On another occasion, a female student of mine arrived early to class and proceeded to approach me with an offer to let her “take care of me.” She told me that if I allowed her to be the woman in my life, I could quit my job and drive one of her many nice vehicles and live out my days doing whatever it is that I truly love.
At this point, I felt like I was being punked. How was it possible that these students could feel so comfortable approaching me in this manner? I have beautiful womanly curves, but I don’t dress provocatively, and I maintain healthy boundaries with them at all times. Yet still, I am being harassed by aggressive male and female students who want to explore personal and intimate relationships with me.
I’m extremely frustrated, and it’s making it hard to teach these particular students because they are more focused on their feelings for me than they are on their classwork.
I had dinner with a fellow colleague and expressed my dissatisfaction with the matter at hand, and he suggested that I blow it all off and just teach. But how? When I turn around to write on the board, I am being catcalled as though I’m walking by some construction site wearing a pair of Daisy Duke shorts.
I am more than mildly uncomfortable and am considering walking away from a job that I once loved. I feel that reporting the occurrences would create a hostile work environment, to say the least.
Should I report my concerns to the dean of students or just walk away and find another teaching job?
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