I’m a lover of music, and random songs have a way of kicking into my head and playing themselves at the most unexpected moments.
Yesterday, I had just finished teaching a class that has consistently tested my patience, professionalism, and, quite frankly, my sanity this semester. As I walked out of the classroom, the song that suddenly came to mind was Jennifer Lopez’s “Let’s Get Loud.”
Not that there was any obvious connection. Or maybe there was.
Maybe it was my mind trying to exhale. Maybe it was the suppressed urge to let out one long, loud scream, releasing all the frustration I had swallowed in the name of professionalism while dealing with students whose attitudes and behaviors have repeatedly tested the limits of my patience.
A few days ago, I came across a post by a professor who argued that American universities have increasingly adopted a customer-service model of education. The professor’s point was that when students are positioned as customers, some begin to imagine that paying tuition, and a ridiculously expensive one at that, entitles them to a finished product without necessarily requiring any meaningful investment on their part.
The argument immediately brought to mind the experience of shopping on Amazon.
You sit comfortably on your couch, scroll through hundreds of products, find something you like, click add to cart, and place your order. Then you wait for your package to arrive. You expect it to arrive on time, in excellent condition, and exactly as advertised. Whatever happens between the moment you place that order and the moment it arrives at your doorstep is none of your business. Who had to stay up all night processing orders? Who had to navigate impossible delivery schedules? Who had to sort, package, transport, or reorganize shipments? None of that concerns you. You paid for a product, and you expect it to be delivered.
Now, imagine bringing that same mentality into a classroom.
Except that education is not a product that can simply be packaged and delivered to someone’s doorstep. Learning requires participation. It requires intellectual curiosity, discipline, accountability, and, sometimes, the willingness to be uncomfortable. A professor can design the most engaging lessons, provide thoughtful feedback, create opportunities for learning, and make themselves available for support. But a professor cannot do the learning on behalf of the student.
And yet, there are moments when it feels as though that is precisely what some students expect.
The nonchalance. The entitlement. The casual disregard for instructions, deadlines, and the intellectual labor that goes into teaching. The expectation that every inconvenience should be negotiated away and every consequence should somehow become the instructor’s responsibility.
Sometimes, it is enough to make you want to get loud. But I didn’t get loud. Instead, I smiled.
I smiled because I realized that, on a few occasions this semester, I had managed to protect my peace by being a little petty. Yes, petty.
In today’s parlance, pettiness is often used to describe a response perceived as unnecessarily trivial, spiteful, or disproportionate to an offense. When someone is accused of being petty, the assumption is usually that they have chosen to make a big deal out of something small, or that they are deliberately withholding a kindness they could easily extend.
But I have been thinking about the ways we sometimes label people’s responses as petty without paying sufficient attention to the circumstances that produced those responses in the first place.
What happens when what looks like pettiness is actually a refusal to continue accommodating behavior that has repeatedly crossed a boundary?
What happens when the person who has always been understanding, flexible, and willing to make exceptions decides, for once, to follow the rules exactly as written?
Is that pettiness? Or is it the self-preservation of their humanity?
Within the context of teaching, where professionalism often demands an extraordinary amount of emotional regulation, you are expected to remain calm when students are dismissive, patient when instructions are repeatedly ignored, accommodating when responsibilities are neglected, and gracious even when the same grace is not extended to you.
But what happens when these expectations begin to come at the expense of the instructor’s own time, energy, dignity, and even mental health?
Imagine a scenario where you have carefully planned an in-class group activity designed to encourage participation and collaborative learning. Just as the activity begins, a student gets up and leaves the classroom, only to return, almost calculatedly, at the very end of class. The student then walks up to you and casually asks, “What did I miss?”
Now, suppose you simply glare at the student or respond, “You can ask one of the classmates you usually talk to or check the slidedeck.” Would that make you petty? Perhaps, in the student’s eyes.
But what exactly would have constituted a non-petty response? Were you expected to smile warmly, invite the student to sit down, and spend another fifteen or twenty minutes explaining an activity they had chosen not to participate in? Or perhaps schedule an office hour to recreate the learning experience they deliberately missed? Would that have made you a better, more professional, and more compassionate instructor?
I believe deeply in compassionate pedagogy. I believe students deserve opportunities to learn, make mistakes, and grow. I also recognize that students navigate circumstances that may not always be visible to us. But compassion cannot mean the perpetual suspension of accountability. Neither should professionalism require instructors to absorb every form of disrespect without establishing boundaries.
So, perhaps what I have occasionally called pettiness is simply my decision to stop overextending myself as a professor. To resist the impulse to explain something for the tenth time when it has already been communicated clearly in five different places. To allow a deadline to remain a deadline. To recognize that sometimes the most responsible pedagogical decision is to let students experience the consequences of their choices, even when those consequences include failing a course, especially when, as an instructor, you have exhausted every reasonable avenue to help them avoid that outcome.
Because how do you miss more than half of the semester’s classes, without so much as the courtesy of sending an email to explain your absence or even acknowledging an instructor’s email checking in on your well-being, and still expect to walk away with an A? At what point did simply being enrolled in a course become equivalent to actively participating in it? And why should an instructor be expected to bend over backward to manufacture an academic outcome that a student’s own level of engagement does not justify?
So, if, as an instructor who spends hours preparing for my classes, carefully grading assignments and providing individualized feedback to help students improve on subsequent assignments, and constantly thinking of creative ways to keep the classroom engaging and make students active participants in their own learning, I occasionally respond to nonchalance, indiscipline, entitlement, and a disregard for the intellectual labor of teaching with what might be perceived as pettiness, perhaps it is because I, too, need to preserve my humanity.
Because behind the professional identity of an instructor is a human being whose time, energy, emotions, and efforts matter. A human being who can become frustrated, exhausted, and disappointed. A human being who deserves the same consideration and respect that they are expected to extend to students.
And if preserving that humanity sometimes means refusing to overextend myself, insisting on accountability, or allowing students to experience the consequences of their choices, then perhaps what looks like pettiness is simply my way of reminding myself that my responsibility to care for my students should not come at the expense of caring for myself.
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