Editor,
The Daily Lobo reported Aug. 28 that UNM is No. 1 in having inaccessible professors, according to the prestigious Princeton Review.
I am very thankful that we finally became No. 1 in something. The Princeton Review study was a rigorous scientific examination based on a single question asked of a few students: Are your professors accessible? I was reading this article while munching a Little Debbie snack cake during my office hours.
I've taught for a long time, and every day I face the terrifying specter of office hours, I begin to tremble in fear. I feel like Lonely, the Maytag repairman who waits forever for a customer to show up. No one ever calls. No one ever drops by. There I am waiting for the world to beat a track to my cubicle in the Humanities Building, and it just doesn't happen. Yes, every time office hours roll around, it fills me with existential dread. I'm so accessible, it hurts. There I crouch in my lonely office, pitiful and despondent, waiting for a student, any student, to come by.
A knock on the door, I leap up from my desk. "Hi, I'm Burbank." My voice is too loud and I stick out my hand to shake, but it's just Jerry, the bookseller, wondering if I'm sane and, by the way, can he look over my textbooks?
So, this is what I'm saying to all my students, actually to any student, actually to staff people, especially in maintenance and food services, in fact to people who just happen to be hanging around, the homeless perhaps, or the guy who fixes the elevator - indeed to any living, breathing being, whether on two feet, four feet, or even six feet: Please come on by during office hours. Break the spell of my existential dread and the ultimate solitude I bear without flinching too much.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Come on by. We'll share a Little Debbie and a cup of coffee. OK, I'll even make appointments up until 2:30 a.m. After that, I have to grade papers.
James Burbank
UNM faculty
