wisdom, teeth

A lot of my students get their wisdom teeth cut out.  You’ve seen the videos where they talk crazy, right?  I’m Gen X and I went to an old-school dentist in the tiny town of Inman, SC.  I had the same dentist from birth through my 30s.  He was hilarious and he loved to joke with me when I came in – which was pretty often.  My teeth are kinda terrible.  I didn’t grow up with fluoride in my water since we had a well.  Pair that with my intense love of candy and a steady flow of soft drinks and you end up with a mouth full of fillings.  In the 1980s and 1990s, those fillings were all some sort of toxic metal and I had enough metal in there that when I stuck a spoon in my mouth, I could get radio signals from Russia in my head.  Then science discovered all that metal was actually toxic and I had to get all those fillings removed and replaced by whatever the newest, less toxic thing was.  So much drilling, so much Novocain and so many trips to visit my dentist.

I also had 4 wisdom teeth and two of those had erupted from the gumline in a way that was crowding my other teeth.  No big deal to Dr. Beachamp.  He said we’d just pull those suckers out.  He shot me full of Novocain, grabbed some dental pliers, put his foot on my shoulder and yanked those puppies out.  I may be exaggerating the foot on my shoulder, but I’m not joking when I tell you he was asking me to pull against him as he used all his body weight to pull those teeth out.  

I was in my early 20s when he did this and I never once thought he didn’t know what he was doing.  It never occurred to me to stop him and ask him to explain why he was pulling my teeth the way he was.  I grew up working in my dad’s welding shop and I had used pliers a lot in my 20 years.  I never considered telling my dentist that he wasn’t holding the pliers correctly or telling him I had a better idea for getting my teeth out.  I mean, that would have been silly, right?  Like, actually ridiculous.  

I was thinking about this recently when a student questioned me about my teaching.  A couple of students, actually, have done that this academic year and it’s not uncommon.  I would say that at least once a year, I have one or two students who will ask me to stop what I’m doing and explain to them the exact nature of my pedagogy.  They don’t understand why I’m making certain choices in my teaching, they think they know a better way and they demand an explanation.

At my age, I’m not very patient.  Now that I’m 54 I figure I can play my age card and just not tell people I was never patient at all.  After 24 years teaching college level studio art classes, I feel safe saying I know what I’m doing.  Sure, students have changed and so has the educational climate, but I have kept up.  I pay attention and I’m a very driven teacher, so I have adapted my teaching to continue to be successful in these very different academic times.  Because of that, when a student asks me to slow down and explain my every decision, I just don’t have the patience to oblige.  Most recently, I will respond with something along the lines of “I’m asking you to trust me”.  I figure if the student doesn’t trust the professor, we’re pretty much done being productive anyway.  

See, I know that Dr. Beachamp went to school for some extra years to become a dentist.  I understand that school involves some book learning, but that he also had to spend a lot of time practicing his craft before he earned his degree.  I also knew that as a middle aged man when I met him, he had extensive hands-on experience at being a dentist.  Dude had seen some teeth and worked on them, you know?  As a child and even as a 20 year old, I had not been to dental school, nor had I worked on teeth for a decade or so.  He was the expert in the room when it came to teeth.  

At this point in my teaching career, I’ve been teaching studio art classes longer than most of my students have been alive.  They are either fresh out of high school or in their undergraduate years and most don’t even have fully developed frontal lobes.  Absolutely none have teaching experience at the college level.  Not even a semester.  The idea of having to stop my class and explain to them why I’m making the choices I’m making is just as ridiculous as questioning any other professional.  I just don’t understand it.  

I didn’t like getting my gums shot full of Novocain.  I didn’t like getting my teeth drilled.  I didn’t like the Doc jerking my teeth out with all of his body weight.  Still, I didn’t blame him for what needed to be done.  I didn’t question it because I had zero understanding of dentistry.  He said something needed to be done and I said, “Ok”.  No discussion, no questions.

What is it about the current climate of education that causes teachers to be treated so differently from all other professionals?  University professors have annual reviews, intense 3 and 6 year reviews and our course evaluations from students are treated like sacred religious texts, often quoted or otherwise referenced in our annual reviews.  At any moment, we are expected to explain exactly what we are doing, why we are doing it and then we are expected to politely explain why the students’ “better ideas” aren’t actually better ideas without insulting them or hurting their feelings.  It makes no sense.  

A K-12 teacher must have a degree, pass the Praxis and be certified by the state.  It seems like those achievements would merit some sort of trust and respect.  A university teacher must earn the terminal degree in their field of study.  Not only are they expected to be experts in the area of study, but also in the practice of teaching.  Again, they are reviewed annually and observed in the classroom on various occasions to ensure competency.  Why can’t we trust them?

When the decisions affecting education are being made outside of the teaching institution and being made by people who have never taught in the educational system, you should expect those decisions to be pretty terrible for education.  

If you’ve ever wondered why public education is in the state it’s currently in, maybe you should be asking why we don’t trust teachers to do their jobs and why we don’t elect former teachers to make educational policies.

atrophying intelligence

I’m sure I’m not the first person to come up with the real meaning behind the abbreviation “AI”.  Listen, can we just be real here for a moment?  Maybe let’s all drop the pretense about how busy and important we all are and just sit with some thoughts for a few minutes.

AI is not going to help you.  Relying on Chat GPT and other forms of generative AI to do things for you is actually hurting you.

The very goal of AI is to do things for humans.  You’re busy, you don’t have time to do stuff.  Don’t read the search results one by one, let AI summarize it for you.  Don’t write that boring paper, let AI write it for you.  Don’t do the research, let AI find it for you.  Don’t hire a graphic designer, let AI design it for you.  It’s all about cutting humans out of the equation.  Did you read that last sentence?  It’s all about cutting YOU out of the equation.  

When we started with smart phones, I was there.  Always a skeptic but convincing myself I’m a realist, I gave the first generation of iPhones the side-eye.  I didn’t think we needed all that in our hands when we all had a computer on our desk.  They got me with the music, though.  Yes, it was a phone and you could send text messages but you could also keep your entire music collection in the palm of your hand.  I’m a big-time commuter, so by gen 3, I signed up and never looked back.  I thought it was cool when I could get my email on the beach.  Until I realized I could be emailed while I was on the beach.  Now, we’ve pretty much all moved into “on-call 24-7” sorts of jobs.  I guess that convenience came with a pretty big price, huh? 

These smart phones didn’t end up saving us any time.  They simply ushered in an era when more of our time would be demanded by jobs and by social media.  Look at it with honest eyes, guys, we kind of lost that one too.  

Now we have a generation of school kids who know how to use AI to write papers without being caught by AI detectors.  It’s not that hard.  I know you’ve heard the stories about the dumb ones who didn’t proof read the AI draft, but you may not have heard about the larger group of more clever students who used AI to do the heavy lifting and then rephrased the whole thing in their own words.  They didn’t do the work, didn’t learn what they were supposed to learn but still got the credit and moved on.  They’re driving on your street and they’re going to vote in November.

We also have teachers who are using AI to write lesson plans.  That doesn’t sound evil at all because we know we expect far too much from teachers already.  Using AI sounds smart because any way we can give teachers more time, that’s a good thing.  But it doesn’t stop there.  A shortcut is a shortcut and any profession will find ways to use them to save money.  To cut costs.  To cut jobs.  Remember that teacher thing?  Do you also remember that Star Treky weird speech the First Lady gave recently about robots taking over the teaching profession.  Still think it’s a good idea to use AI to write a lesson plan?  As soon as they see they can do it without you, they’ll do it without you.  It’s all about cutting YOU out of the equation.  

Most recently I saw that several AI experts agree there’s at least a 20% chance AI will be responsible for the demise of human existence.  That’s another sentence you should read again.  That wasn’t Joe-Bob down the street from you.  These were AI developers and technology experts.  It’s all about cutting YOU out of the equation.

I’m 54 and my body doesn’t work as effortlessly as it did when I was younger.  I grew up outside playing, working and moving all the time.  As I got older, I noticed certain movements were different from when I was 16.  In my 20s I noticed that my musculature was not visible anymore.  It scared me enough to start looking into exercise.  I was running pretty regularly, but I started running even more.  I added some stretches and weights to my routine.  In my 40s, I noticed that I didn’t recover as quickly from races and that the food I ate actually made me feel bad.  I had to make more changes.  

Steadily since then, I’ve been adding more and more to my daily routine.  I stretch more.  I do more strength training.  I still run a lot.  If you ask me why in real life, I’ll make a joke and you’ll laugh about how crazy I am.  But if you want the truth, it’s because I learned about atrophy in high school biology.  Then I learned about it again in that college Bio class I barely passed.  If you don’t use it, you lose it.  

I’ve watched my elders grow old and become inactive.  I’ve literally watched some of them disintegrate right in front of me.  Wrinkled skin and bones where there use to be muscle.  Now when I read about exercise for people my age, the word atrophy gets used a lot.  Exercise experts agree that men in their 50s reach a point of accelerated muscle loss if there’s no exercise to fight it.  The body knows to focus on what is important and those things we’re not using must not be important.  If it’s not important, the body will do away with it.  

Find how AI can become a shortcut for you and use it.  Then watch yourself forget how to do that task.  Watch students stop doing research from sources they actually have to read and stop writing papers with their own brains.  Watch them let AI do it all for them.  Then watch them lose the ability to research and compose.  Stop using human intelligence and watch it go away.  There’s already data showing we’re losing intelligence by the year.  

You’re not too busy to read more than one Google result.  You’re not too busy to write your own caption for Instagram.  Please stop using AI.  Use your own intelligence.

Use it or lose it.  

Statement of the obvious:

I am aware that AI has shown positive results in helping to detect and remedy medical concerns like cancer.  I think this science and medical based application is a proper use of technology.  While I can likely support the use of natural resources for things that actually provide a service to humanity, there’s a vast difference between this use of AI and the most common uses that cross my path on a daily basis:  dancing elf videos with your face, making your cat speak English, faking an artist statement and sourcing recycled ideas for visual art.  Generative AI is hurting you a lot more than it’s helping you.

I learned it from my kids

I can hear it now.  “McAbee’s gone soft!”

At least once a year I hear a student complain that I’m being too easy on the younger class of students in the Sculpture Studio.  Early in my teaching career I would dismiss these groundless claims but after a few years of repeated complaints, I decided I needed to take a moment and see if I had really changed.  It turned out that the reason they were saying that had more to do with their biased memories of how mean I was to them.  The pressure always seems worse when you’re in the class.  I’ve taken the time to explain this to a few students over the years and most have reluctantly agreed.  

After 24 years of teaching college classes, I do understand that I’ve changed how I teach.  I was probably a lot more strict with my students early on.  I know I held them to a very high standard and I could give you a list of names of currently successful arts professionals who benefited from those high expectations.  When I changed schools, I kept my high standards as much as possible but did have to make some exceptions because I was in a different environment teaching a different demographic.  

Since then, our degrees have changed and I’ve added a lot of classes.  We’ve also been through a pandemic and adjusted to a generation of students who relied on Individual Education Plans in high school and had a COVID adjusted educational experience.  So yeah, I’ve definitely had to adjust my tactics over the years.  My expectations remain high, though and the quality of education I deliver is also high.

I remember (and I think I’ve mentioned it in a post in the past) coming back from quarantine and having a conversation with a friend about how much students needed hugs.  I genuinely believed that their lack of physical contact and any real sign of affection had negatively impacted their mental and emotional health.  I decided that I was going to fix that by offering hugs to all my students when they returned.  I chickened out.  But there’s this other thing I didn’t chicken out on and I wanted to tell you about it.

My “teaching face” is that I’m an emotionless art machine.  I tell my students that they need to work all the time and that we can separate ourselves from our emotions and from things that might be going on in our lives.  I have often said that we can check our worries and anxieties at the studio door.  As a teacher, I know that I must practice this daily.  When you have a job to do, no one cares what’s going on in your life.  You still need to show up and be excellent.  Always trying to practice what I preach, after I held my dad’s hand for the last time ever, I drove home, got a couple of hours of sleep and was back at school early the next morning for class.  That’s exactly what he would have told me to do.  

It really doesn’t matter what kind of morning I’ve had or how I’m feeling when it comes to being an effective teacher.  I need to be able to give my all to my students if I’m expecting my students to do the same.  Two Augusts ago my art persona was in jeopardy.  My son started attending the school where I teach and every now and then he would come by my office or the studio.  I loved it and always wanted him to feel welcome.  I figure it was a bit of a comfort for him as he got used to life away from home.  The thing is, Blue has always been really great at this one thing:  telling you he loves you when he leaves.  I’ve always respected and admired him for this.  On that very first visit there were students around who only knew me as an emotionless machine.  When it was obvious Blue was about to leave, I had a moment of tension when I realized that in every other situation he would say “Bye, I love you” as he left.  I wondered if he would still say it with people around.  He did.  So much respect.  

My graduate mentor was very similar.  He was all business, all work, all the time.  He had no interest in your little feelings, he only wanted you to make great work.  The first time I saw him interact with his adorable toddler daughter, my world stopped spinning.  Who was this human man who was baby-talking with this adorable child?  Surely this couldn’t be the same professor who had just shouted in a wonderful British accent at an entire class of slacker students…possibly even cursing at us.

As Blue walked away, I rightly responded, “Bye, I love you too”.  I could feel the confusion in the air as students tried to process how my body had been snatched and had been replaced by some alien who clearly didn’t know who I was.  

Slowly and quietly, Blue and Violet (because she had learned the same habits from Blue) were teaching me that it was important to tell people you love them.  

This academic year I started to wonder if my students knew I loved them.  (You can find a recent post about this topic.)  When it became clear to me that some students did not know that, I decided to take a cue from Blue and tell them.  When I would finally gather my belongings at the end of a long day and walk through the studio, there would be a number of students working.  I announced I was leaving and said “Bye, I love y’all!”.

The response was interesting.  That first time, only a couple of close students were brave enough to say “Love you too!”.  Quickly, though, others followed suit.  After a few months of this happening regularly, I’m sure there are still some who just listen and don’t respond as I leave, but I smile knowing they still have to hear that they are loved.  

Soft you say?  Dude.  Anything but.  Pick a student and ask them if my classes or projects are easy.  They’ll tell you I yelled at them and demanded that they put in double digit hours in the studio outside of class time.  They'll tell you I told them to quit their job and break up with their person.  They’ll tell you this is their hardest class.  They’ll tell you I’m mean.  And I’m ok with all of that as long as they also tell you that they are certain that I love them.

Looking back on the former years of teaching, I wonder if those students knew I loved them.  I was really tough on people like Scherini, Sarah Gregory, Logan, and Molly at Winthrop and Ali, Emily, Armir in the early Lander days.  I was tough on them precisely because I love them.  It’s easy to not care.  Loving is hard. Surely they knew.  Right?  Surely.  

the origin story

A random photo because posts without photos look weird

When the internet was really becoming a thing back in the late 1990s, my job as a graphic designer was following right along with technology.  There were no computers in the art department when I was hired and for a couple of years, I worked on a black and white laptop to show my bosses just how much faster some of my daily tasks could be completed with drawing software.  If you don’t remember the sound of a dial up modem, you will have trouble understanding what a huge step forward this technology was for a graphic artist.

Quickly, desktop computers replaced the laptop and I taught myself CorelDraw software, the PC equivalent of Illustrator back then.  In the span of a few years, my 8 hour days had changed from standing at a drafting table and making giant enlargements of logos and designs on sheets of paper, to sitting in front of a computer and clicking a mouse all day.  Connectivity also changed and instead of getting photocopies of art from customers and walking that large drawing over to the digitizing office, the internet now allowed me to receive and send art by email, all without moving from my chair.  

These were the days when Facebook required a school email to sign up.  Though I never even considered Facebook, I noticed that MySpace existed and looking at that, I noticed that not only were people posting photos and music on their pages, but some would also post links to their blogs.  A blog?  What’s a blog?  Apparently this was short for a “web log” and that was just a tech word for writing down your thoughts and posting them for people to see.  Sometimes there were great stories from regular people and this was intriguing to me.  I often didn’t know the people in real life, but I learned so much about them from their blogs.  I loved seeing their photos and I loved reading their stories.  

Remember that I was chained to this large desktop computer for 8 hours each day.  I understood the importance of looking busy at work, so as the computer allowed me to complete my work with more efficiency, I realized that staring at the screen for work looked just like staring at the screen for fun.  I was able to get a lot of my work finished and then spend some time reading blogs.  I didn’t really watch reality TV but I think this was also the same time when that took off in popularity.  The lives and interests of regular people was becoming entertainment.

After being a spectator in the blog world for a while, I wondered if I was the type of person someone would enjoy reading about in a blog.  I guess my experience with the world of the internet has always allowed me to see it as a tool and to see myself as an active contributor instead of just a passive consumer.  If I started a blog, I doubted anyone would read it, but perhaps it could still be a useful tool for me.  I have long been a proponent of keeping a sketchbook and writing about my thoughts and experiences.  I wondered if a blog could be a type of digital sketchbook.  

In the summer of 2007, I got a Blogger account and with a great deal of trepidation, I posted my first blog entry.  I am certain that no one saw it.  I didn’t tell anyone I had a blog for years.  Eventually, a few close friends and my aunt Laura Jean found it and they became my audience of about 3.  Every time my aunt LJ got a new computer or device, she would have me create a shortcut for her to find my blog.  If I posted something she didn’t like, we would talk about it during my visits.  Occasionally I’d get a comment on a post but these were rare, even years later.  

Over the years, my approach to blogging has changed a few times.  I’ve probably been a couple of different people over the last 19 years.  I mean, I had to learn how to be a parent of humans, I made a significant career change, I turned 40 and then 50.  The world has also changed significantly during that time.  Everyone started doing everything internet related on their phones, they left their blogs to start posting on Vine, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok and people with zero discernable talent or personality became celebrities (and politicians).  With all the digital noise in the world, I don’t get the impression that many people still have regular old blogs.  

Lucky for me, I didn’t care if you read it when I started it.  Because it was a tool first and foremost for me, I’ve been happy that it has remained an effective place to store thoughts and be able to retrieve them.  Just like an old sketchbook or journal, I have the ability to go back through those old posts and remember who I was then.  Some of those old McAbees seem like distant memories, if not almost strangers.  

If you’re reading this, you may be one of the elite few who have decided to read my ramblings over the last few years.  If you scroll back far enough, you’ll probably find that I wrote something I no longer believe.  Something that is glaringly obvious to me as I flip through an old sketchbook or scroll through the blog is that change is constant.  I’m thankful that I’ve been a malleable human so far.  I hope I’ll continue to be open to change and growth.  Maybe you’ll read about it if I keep the blog for another 19 years.  

academic friendship

A few weeks ago, an education major asked me how I balance being friends my students and being a teacher to my students.  The question came about sort of naturally during a “podcast assignment” where the questions and my answers were being recorded.  My response was clumsy, in part, because it’s not something I think about consciously very often and , in part, because I knew my answer could easily become an essay.  Looks like we might be here today for the essay answer.

First of all, let’s address the semantics.  Am I “friends” with my students?  When I learned how to be an educator for K-12 certification 30 years ago, the idea of being friends with your students was pretty far-fetched.  That’s typically not a concern for K-12 teachers anyway, and with the much weirder headlines in the last 30 years, I’d say it’s not a good idea.  During college I had experiences with my professors in line with that way of thinking.

In the 1990s, we treated our professors like lower deities.  We addressed them by their titles, we always felt like we were intruding on their time if we went to their office/studio and we hung on every word they spoke.  We treated them with respect.  These were experts who had very important things they could be doing.  Students understood that they were blessed to be in the presence of such wisdom, experience and greatness.

The current academic environment is a consumer driven environment and one that is very different from my experience 30 years ago.  Schools now are providing a product, students are customers and professors are basically waitstaff.  Respect for professors is pretty much non-existent and all of this is further exacerbated by how this generation of students has been made to believe that anything worth learning should be entertaining and should be presented in segments no longer than 3 minutes at a time.  I’ve seriously had a student tell me he could learn sculpture from YouTube as he dismissed me completely.

The old idea of standing in front of a room of students and “professing” knowledge is outdated and ineffective.  Students expect a stunning presentation and teachers who fail to connect with them will most definitely lose them, or at least lose their attention.  

Over my years of teaching, I have learned the importance of personal connection as an educational tool.  I spend time asking questions and carefully observing my students so that I can figure out how to connect with them.  If I know what makes them feel challenged, what their interests are and where their point of frustration exists, I can put myself in a better position to help them grasp the course information.  This is a part of effective teaching most people outside of education do not understand and one that takes a great deal of extra effort.  If you look at the basic structure of that strategy; getting to know someone, learning about their interests, showing interest in them, working to help them…that basic structure also looks a lot like friendship.  

Friendship comes with care.  It feels a little lame to hedge on the use of the more accurate word here.  Let’s be bold and honest.  Friendship comes with LOVE.  Do I love my students?  Most definitely I do.  I don’t think about my salary very often, but I recently saw my annual salary on a tax return and I promise you that I would not be doing this job if I didn’t love my students very much.  So yeah, I love my students and I’m friends with them.  

I’m friends with most of them, at least.  I’ve had to learn to accept the fact that I’m not for everyone and I’m still trying to be ok with that.  Some students will not like my personality, teaching style or the fact that I’m a middle aged white guy and those students will gravitate towards a different personality on our teaching staff.  Does this hurt me deep down?  Heck yes.  Can I do anything about it?  Nope.  But the ones who do respond well, I do my best to be a friend to them.  And I do my best to love the ones who don’t, just the same.

Sometimes that means my students give me music and movie suggestions in the studio.  Sometimes that means we will have a conversation about current events or ask thought provoking questions to one another.  Sometimes it means we’ll have coffee together outside of class.  Sometimes it means we’ll gather in a group and get food after a gallery reception.  Sometimes it means they’ll come in my office and sit silently on their phone or computer for an hour.  Sometimes it just means we high five and speak when we see each other on campus.  Whatever the specifics may be from person to person, it’s still people who are choosing to spend their time together and to actively seek connection.  You know, friendship.

Here's a whole group of former students who I still call good friends.  Those friendships began in the studio, on the racquetball court, running 5Ks around campus and getting shakes at Cookout.  I know they wont see this because they only read really racy books, but I love them dearly.

It takes time and energy to love.  All of the duties listed and evaluated on my annual faculty review have to do with teaching, research and service.  I’m never asked about love or friendship and the amount of time and energy I put into that, even if it does factor into my teaching.  I never tell my Dean that I stayed three hours after class to go to a field hockey game because one of my sculptors is on the team.  I suppose that’s difficult to quantify and in the world of consumer academics, it may not be valued.  In my studio, however, it is essential.  (I also understand that it’s simply a part of how I teach effectively and it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s quantifiable to administrators.)

Now that we’ve established that I do have academic friendships and that I see those friendships as key factors in the success of my teaching, let’s get to the question I was asked.  How do I balance those with teaching?

Ugh.  The most accurate answer is “carefully”.  The “ugh” is necessary because friendship isn’t easy.  The answer is “carefully” because every single student is different and that means every single situation must be handled differently.  Some students are what I call volcanoes.  They are pleasant and wonderful right up until the eruption.  No warning, no change in facial expression or attitude, just total destruction in every direction.  Some students are like summer in the South.  You know exactly what to expect every day with almost no variation.  Some are a little more like a Southern Spring.  Ice cold at 8:00 am, thunderstorm at noon, 80 degrees and sunny at 3:00 pm.  The conditions change a lot, but it's all pretty manageable and predictable.  Some students rarely speak a word in the studio, some won’t shut up.  Some students work nonstop, some almost need to be physically forced to work at all.  Every personality type, every attitude, every demeanor is what I have to be prepared to engage with in the studio.  

Showing love to one student may involve a tactic that would be offensive to another student.  I can walk in and shout “Get to work slacker!” to one student and they’ll jump to action.  Saying that to another student would send them to the bathroom in tears.  I can joke and kid with one and I can absolutely never joke around with another one.  Some students need a challenge to become motivated.  Some students frustrate easily and a challenge will kill their motivation.  Some respond well to my high energy antics and some will cower in a corner until I calm down.  Teaching the way I do is not the path of least resistance.  It is probably the most difficult way to go about it.

In a practical sense, “carefully” means that I have to continually be switched on as a teacher.  My antenna always needs to be up and receiving cues related to facial expression, body language, energy shifts and verbal stimuli.  Some students come preloaded with family and friend histories that profoundly impact how they will interact with me.  Some are happy to be friends and they possess a maturity that will allow them to engage in a healthy way.  Others are skeptical and may only open up after you establish trust.  

I can hear you wondering how grades impact these friendships.  Here’s the thing that might be most surprising about it:  I would say not at all.  My job is to professionally assess the work my students do.  This assessment is not personal at all.  There are established criteria for each project and I have always found the process of grading to be void of emotion.  It either is or it isn’t.  It either does or it doesn’t.  I am not grading the human, nor am I grading the friendship.  I’m grading a project.  I explain this process on syllabus day and I rarely need to revisit it.  I have students who will come to my office after seeing their C or D in Blackboard and they’ll say, “Yeah, I stunk that one up.  I promise I’m going to do better next time.”  Sometimes they do better and sometimes they do not.  I still give them a high five when I see them and I welcome them to sit and chat.  I’ve had students I’m academic friends with fail my class.  It happens.  I check in, see what I can do to help them, listen to their problems and then I’ll see them again the following semester in the same class.  

Here's my friend Armir.  He actually failed/withdrew from my class because, while I loved him, I wouldn't budge on attendance.  He respected that and took the class again later, passing it and many other upper level classes with me.  Armir is the founder of "Coffee With McAbee" and I love him so much.  

Many of my students over the years have learned that being my pal doesn’t mean they get any grace or good grades.  Many of those students, though, have allowed that academic friendship to propel them forward in their work.  My very high expectations and words of scolding may be taken more seriously because we’ve established that I actually care about the student.  I’m not just a teacher telling them I expect more, I’m a trusted friend telling them I expect more.  More often than not, students rise to my expectations and I have no doubt that my level of care and love for them is a factor.  

Remember when MoLo got so mad at me in the studio, she walked out and slammed the door?  Remember when I followed and yelled something down the hall at her as she left?  Good times.  We apologized to each other and not only are we friends, she texted out of the blue last week.  MoLo is the reason there's always a working Dremel in the studio.  I love her.

The thing that makes balance interesting is when it doesn’t work.  Right?  I mean, we watch a balancing act because there’s a chance we’ll see someone fall.  Sometimes students get mad at me.  Sometimes I get mad at students.  Sometimes we have to have a sit down conversation to get past it.  In a small department like ours, it’s not uncommon for me to hear that someone was talking crap about me to other students.  In those moments, I try to remember that I chose this strategy.  I remind myself that we all make mistakes and I try not to take it personally.  Besides, the other option is to protect my feelings and be a less effective teacher.  I'm not willing to do that.

Sometimes it does work and it works beautifully.  There are former students who keep in touch many years after graduation and those academic friendships have transitioned into just plain friendships.  I’ve gone to dinner parties, helped deliver artwork, helped move furniture, given career advice, approved significant others for dating and officiated a wedding for various students in the past.  Sometimes they’ll get nostalgic and remind me of something they learned in my class.  That’s when I remember how important it is to do the difficult thing.  There are easier ways to teach, but I guess I don’t always do the easy thing.  

Just remember:  I teach college students, mostly age 18 and up.  I do not recommend my teaching antics to K-12 teachers, however, I do recommend loving your students.  Also, if you decide to attempt academic friendships at the college level, know that you're signing up for a lot of extra effort.  Love is an action, not just a word.

the search for a nap

Not that you asked, but I had a great Spring Break.  Wanna hear about it?  Wanna see photos?

My first day of Spring Break started off with some good old fashioned manual labor.  Coming off of two days of plaster pouring with the freshman 3D Design classes, I could have used a no alarm morning and a nap.  Instead, I got up early and drove back to school for a full day of hard work.  

One of my upper level classes has taken on a public art project with the Ninety Six Neighborhood Mill Society.  We've been waiting for a while to get our laser cut designs in the studio and now that we have them, we need to do a lot of work.  These beasts are heavy (the pieces of steel, not the workers) and it takes all of our muscles to move them around.  These beasts are hard workers (the workers, not the steel) and we all got so much work done.

The next day, I could have used a no alarm morning and a nap, but instead, I had planned the Art Hike.  It's not so much of a choice when it was literally the only Saturday I had available when we made the plans.  

And when you have a gorgeous day with wonderful humans AND WALTER, you can't be mad about it.  I happily got up early and opted for an afternoon coffee with the gang instead of a nap.  It was a beautiful day in every way.  

Sunday, I could have REALLY used a no alarm morning and a nap.  I didn't get up too early, but I still had to set an alarm.  After my run, I loaded up 48 drawings into my Toyota and Violet and I drove them to Greenwood to deliver them for an exhibit.  When we got home that afternoon, I did, in fact, take a nice little nap.  

After my nap, I had a little porch time and allowed my mind to get still.  Now I was ready for Spring Break.

It's been a few years since I observed "The Spring Break Of Waffles" but I haven't been making a lot of waffles lately, so I decided to indulge a little.  Each weekday of Spring Break, I made a different type of McAbee waffle.  I may be a little thicker and now you know why.

The real news of Spring Break was the little guy with the very long nose.  My friend Wilbur came to visit for the week.  We have been pals a long time but I wasn't sure if he'd like my dogs.  I was pretty sure my dogs wouldn't like him.  Mine are attention whores and Wilbur would definitely get a lot of attention.  Luckily, my boys took to him pretty quickly and they got along great.

Walter may not have understood exactly why this little creature was in his house, but he was an absolute angel to Wilbur.  

Yes, I took selfies like a 12 year old girl but if you had Willie kissing you and licking your nose, you would too.  Monday and Tuesday were dedicated Wilbur watching days for me.  There would be no welding or grinding this Spring Break.  I was on high alert as a solo act until people got home at night.  I knew I couldn't just leave Willie inside alone with my dogs while I ran each morning, so I had to set a very early alarm each day so that I could be back inside before everyone left for school and work.  The cuteness was worth it.

Wednesday, Wilbur had a different watcher while I had some work to do.  I still had to get up early, but G was able to be home with Willie while I delivered and installed a public sculpture in Anderson.  

I've learned to make the most of these road trips and I'm a sucker for a good coffee.  Bonus points if the coffee is aesthetically pleasing.  I recommend the Common House in Anderson for both.  

You just can't beat an average hot dog served on a slip of paper.  Skins is not pretentious and you get exactly what you pay for.  Hey, at least the coffee was pretty!

While I was installing a sculpture, Blue was enjoying his Spring Break in Pigeon Forge, TN.  He was getting ready to head home and he spotted a couple of celebrities out shopping.  That's Chris and his wife from 1000 Pound Sisters, a show our family started watching ironically about a year ago.  Blue was so excited to see them.  

Back home, I resumed my Wilbur watch.  I should have quit school and gone into professional dog sitting.  I'm perfect for this career.  Wilbur and I got some TV time in each night.  I was able to finish Barry (highly recommend), I watched Mona Lisa Smile and I watched an Agatha Christie movie.  I tried to watch a couple of other movies but I lost interest pretty quickly.  Willie just slept.  

Some time during the week, Violet and I had dinner with some friends who roasted me about showing my nipples on Instagram.  I jokingly told them they'd never see my nipples again.  I'm on day 3 of trying to use the Austin Powers joke of hiding behind props.  I'm running out of natural props.  Related:  I ran every day and it's always one of the best parts of my day.

The Wilbur watching and the really nice weather gave us a lot of outside time.  We did some porch sitting and some sunshine walking.  These guys got along so well during the week and they loved their outside time.  There were three days of walking where we got at least a mile in.  

I did accomplish some creative things, but those were either not ready for public consumption or they were not very photogenic.  I customized two pair of shoes on commission and I put so many freakin' coats of paint on these three new sculptures.  The sculptures are still not done but if they do turn out, they'll be really cool.  

Wilbur went back home this afternoon and Sundays are usually my day to get ready planning for the upcoming week.  This means Spring Break is almost over.  I was able to be still for a bit and now we brace for the crazy marathon to graduation.  

 

back in my day, we didn't have iphones

My dad liked to sit on the porch.  Many years into his state retirement, he would get up, have his coffee and alternate his sitting/napping between the living room and the porch.  In the living room, it was obvious what he was “doing”.  The TV would be very loud and he’d be watching his favorite westerns between sessions of resting his eyes.  The porch puzzled me, though.  I would drive up, see him on the porch and ask him what he was doing.  He was smart and funny and he always had some creative response that never actually answered my question.  

On this first day of Spring Break, I’ve been enjoying a day of rest.  The last few weeks have been exhausting and I had things scheduled through Sunday.  I enjoyed a short after-lunch nap and then had a second coffee on the front porch.  I parked my phone on the table Sean gave me and watched the dogs settle in for some porch naps.  Several minutes passed, lost in thought and eventually I surfaced enough to realize I had been staring off into the distance for an unknown length of time.  I felt relaxed.  Calm.  Unbothered.  

I’ve been thinking about time like this recently.  Time I feel we, as a society, have lost.  Time spent, not being idle, but being still.

When I was very young, I remember our bathroom door.  Down the hallway, the first door to the left was the bathroom.  It was a long room with a countertop and a large mirror on one side and a shower on the other.  At the end of the countertop there was a sink and beside the sink was the toilet.  When I was a kid, the only time I can remember ever being still was on the toilet.  It was honestly a little torturous for me to stay there long enough to take care of business because time spent there meant time not spent playing and going 100 miles per hour.  

But in those moments of stillness, I remember the back of that door.  It was a hollow, interior wood door and the large, thin sheets of wood veneer featured the natural wood grain with light and dark markings spanning the entire plane.  As I sat there with my kid mind buzzing with activity, I would slow down long enough to get bored.  Looking back, I know realize it took me about 3 seconds to become bored.  In that boredom, my eyes would search for entertainment.  As I scanned the wood grain lines on the back of the door, my eyes noticed patterns and tried to create images from the lines and shapes.  I can still remember the image of a shrouded woman carrying a baby on her back.  Probably similar to an image I saw in one of my dad’s National Geographic magazines.  It was so abstract but I could easily find it every single time.  

I’m sure you’ve done this.  You’ve stared at the lines in the carpet until your eyes put some implied shapes together and created a face.  Then you blinked and you couldn’t find the same image again.  At the very least you’ve stared at the clouds and creatively made the puffy piles of moisture into dogs and dragons and elephants.  

There is a level of stillness of the body and mind that is required for this type of exercise to be possible.  Perhaps it is a level of stillness that we allow ourselves to experience less and less often in the age of constant phone entertainment.  Our eyes and brains are no longer starved for puzzles to solve.  Every second of boredom can be filled with a swipe of a screen and a video of someone dancing.  

I downloaded Instagram in 2012 and I loved the idea of sharing a photo from each day of my life.  Over the years, I’ve also enjoyed using the app to stay in touch with students from a couple of generations of teaching.  I see the app as an important tool for me to use as an artist, teacher and runner.  I find connection, community and sometimes education.  During winter break I also found something else.  I found myself scrolling almost endlessly into the night.  In the late evenings when I was done with my day, I would open Instagram and start scrolling.  Sometimes I’d find an idea and screenshot it or I’d see a process I wanted to revisit later and save that.  But most often it was what my kids call “brain rot”.  A silly video, a joke or someone’s thoughts about a current event.  During those late nights, I would become a customer instead of a seller.

In moderation, all of that may be fine, but I didn’t like how I felt.  An hour or more lost to scrolling through nonsense.  Time I would never get back.  Looking at my sketchbook during that time, I see skeletons of days.  Very few sketches, very few words.  Compare those sketchbook days to the days I spent my still time with a pen in my hand and you’ll see a huge difference.  

In early January, I was brushing my teeth before bed.  My brain was tucking itself in for the night and I caught myself staring at the fuzzy rug on the bathroom floor.  Amongst the hundreds of tufts of blue yarn pushed in different directions by bare feet, dog paws and gravity, my eyes and brain worked together to show me a little man’s face with a wide, full mustache.  I was staring at a rug and suddenly, I saw the yarn laid out in the shape of a man’s face.  I smiled and remembered the bathroom door in my parents’ house.  I remembered how creative my brain is when I give it the time and space to be still.  

I’m now making a conscious effort to let my phone be a tool instead of a crutch.  I will still spend some time catching up, staying in the loop and attempting to advertise my work, but I will consciously try to avoid the death scroll.  I want to keep my hours and provide the stillness my brain needs to explore creativity.  

In a culture where everyone keeps a phone in their hand, it may seem weird to you that I’m sitting and staring off into space.  Maybe my kids will see me and ask me what I’m doing.  I hope my brain will stay agile enough to come up with a funny response.