I really wish I could talk to my therapist about this, but can't anymore as I don't have access to university health anymore since I graduated. We just talked about boundaries and inappropriate feelings. I was also caught up on a past therapist I had who I really wanted to continue seeing, and was just about traumatized when she told me we could not keep in contact. I was told that with therapists you simply cannot keep in contact, which was really painful because she was all I could think about. But now since there is nothing saying you can't keep in contact with a professor, it feels a bit better. Unfortunately I didn't run into her at graduation, but I will get an email from her with my grade in the class. If she replies with just a "You received an A in the class." I'll say thank you, drop everything and just forget her. But if she responds with a nice message saying good job or it was nice having you in class, I'll say a bit more, and ask if she could give me feedback (in class she told us we could ask for it). If she responds in a warm way, I'll say thank you very much, etc etc if you are ever in (my area) I'd love to get coffee, just trying to stay in touch with some of my professors. Have a great summer and fall semester. Keep in mind I will only email once grades are officially done.
If she responds well, then awesome (In many ways I don't even expect to ever meet up with her, just her saying in email "keep in touch" would be awesome enough for me)
If she ignores the subject or directly turns me down, then I drop it and move on.
Sound ok? Just want to make sure I am not doing something catastrophically inappropriate here!
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Originally Posted by Travelinglady
As a former college prof, I can say that I always appreciated the compliments from students after a course was over.
I never felt comfortable encouraging close contact or hugging. Nope. I even had students make passes at me, and that was very awkward.
Please continue to talk to your therapist about this issue. Are you sure you aren't hoping for a more intimate relationship down the road--and as someone said, are wanting to hang around just in case?
I honestly think it would be best to thank her and tell her how much you enjoyed her class and move on. Then maybe......just maybe......down the road you can get back in touch.
Years after I had a professor I really admired, I wrote her out of the blue, telling her how much I had enjoyed her class, etc. She wrote back later and told me I had made her century. We became great friends and even visited each other, spending the night, since we lived far away.
All that said, we were both married, female, and had no physical interest in each other ---only great female friends. I really still miss her. She died of cancer a few years ago. We just somehow really felt a kinship with each other that I have not been able to duplicate.
And I did become friends with an older lady student, who was determined that I was going to be a friend. We kept in touch through calls and letters. She was very special to me, and I still really miss her. She died of cancer, too. (Hmmmm.)
The male-female issue I see as the main problem. I don't know about you folks, but I do think friendship in that case is more clouded, unless one member is not attracted to the other at all.
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