Dear First-Year College Student Who Emailed Me:

I get it. You’re nervous. And you found my name and photo and said I looked friendly. I really kind of am, if you approach me right, and I am in a unique position to talk to you about your fears because I share them.

Though I’ve been an adjunct professor for 13 or so years (roughly the same amount of time you spent in school, prior to coming here, to the University of New Haven), this is my first semester at a full-time professor, and let me tell you, I’m nervous that (and feel free to check the ones that sound familiar):

• I won’t do a good job
• I won’t get my work done on time
• I’ve bitten off more than I can chew

I’d add “I won’t be able to find my classes,” but three of the four classes I’m teaching are in the same room, and it’s literally down the hall from my office, so I think on that front, I’ll be OK.

You couldn’t tell it by looking, but my own college years seem like yesterday. I spent four years at two different schools being vaguely confused by everything going on around me. I made it to class (mostly). I kept up with the reading (mostly), and I was a middling student, mostly because I moved into each respective schools’ newspaper office and stayed there. For years, I’d wake up from one of those panic dreams that varied in detail but always included me mouthing the phrase, “I really have to go to my military sociology class,” which was an actual class I made a habit of missing.

I don’t remember why.

Last night, I had a panic dream that I was holding a young child who’d been very badly hurt and it was on me to take care of that child. I think that’s the result of the multiple orientations I’ve recently attended that have left me stewing over what to do with the phone numbers and emails of support staff, should a student start struggling. The star students are relatively easy, but am I equipped to pull along a student who’s really struggling? This is what wakes me up these days. I don’t come from an academic background. I come from a newsroom, where the equivalent of struggling students were expected to buck up, Buttercup, and get the story in on time. Deadlines wait for no divorce, illness, or death in the family.

(That last part is an exaggeration. I saw great kindnesses extended to people who’d lost loved ones — including myself. But you get the idea.)

So the semester begins, and last night I laid out three different outfits and settled on the most casual one. Did you? I have readied my lectures (mostly) and my syllabi (kind of) but I’m still learning the combination of my locker (Blackboard) and I, like you, am telling myself that things are going to be OK.

I tell my son, a hell of a good father and a good man on top of that, that it’s the parents who worry about what kind of  job they’re doing who make the best parents. They care enough to care, to be nervous, to question themselves.

If that holds true for teachers, I? Will be awesome. And you will be, too. See you in class.