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Oh please, for the sake of your career... just swallow your pride and ask him to help you with letters, research opportunities, advice, etc.!! DOOO EEET WOMAN! For self preservation.
As I said, he might give me a letter but he refused me the other stuff already. I realize there's nothing I can do about the situation from any perspective. Having to go back to school and be in the gf's class is only gonna make it worse. I'm overly sensitive and maybe I won't get over it but I will stop whining (publicly) because it doesn't seem to be helping.
The student/professor dynamic can be really strange for everyone involved. Some students perceive that their professors are coming on to them when the professor is just trying to be helpful. Other times the professor is trying to make a pass at a student and the student is trying to be nice but is really uncomfortable. Professionally, the potential relationship is unethical but everyone knows that it happens.
I'm a professor that has never even considered dating a student, but I still feel like I have some insight into this issue. When I first started teaching I was not married, although I was in a committed relationship with my future wife. I was not 'looking' at all, but I still had some interactions with students where there was some tension. Sometimes it was very awkward for me, like when a student would visit me during office hours and talk for hours and hours because I am a captive audience or touch my arm when turning in an assignment. Part of me would want to call her out for being unprofessional, but I generally would just ignore it because the last thing I would want to do is hurt the self esteem of a young student, especially if the behavior was not intended to be sexual in any way. Mentally, I had a 'line in the sand' that once crossed, I would take action and set the record straight, but most of the time I essentially just played dumb until the interactions ceased.
The only times that I ever had to have a talk about inappropriate conversation topics were with nontraditional (older) students. Maybe it is just a confidence thing, but the 18-22 year olds never crossed the line of asking me to meet them outside of school or asking me if I thought they were attractive. 95% of my students at that school were 18-22, so the number of incidents with older students can't possibly be just a coincidence.
I have to say that those conversations were some of the most awkward moments of my professional career. One woman claimed she was trying to set me up with her sister, and another said she wanted to have the conversation after she graduated.
I do not know if your (the OP) professor is really interested in dating students, or possibly he is just interested in your careers. Maybe he is refusing to work with you because he knows you might want to have a relationship and he wants to avoid the awkward conversation saying it can't happen. I know that there are students that spend so much time in my office for completely legitimate reasons that someone could think that something illicit was going down when in fact the students are just very interested in the subject material. I am certainly not going to be sexist and limit my availability to female students just because someone might have a wild imagination. In fact, I sometimes think that female college students develop a bit of a complex when dealing with male teachers because male high school teachers are so afraid of sexual harassment claims that they may be less likely to give individual attention to female students. It's really not fair, but I think it is a case of a few bad apples ruining things for the rest of us (thus mandating the strict harassment policies).
In general, I'm not one to initiate that sort of thing with anyone-it's just not my personality. However, I do know the difference between friendly professors because I have good relationships with male and female professors, and those that are clearly not academic. I have never had this happen before in other classes and I've been in school for a while. I also know that what I witnessed with the younger student was not academic in nature either. I think as adults, we can differentiate between these things. I don't think younger students can, however. I've also been told from a professor in another department, who has himself been propositioned, that there is a lot of extracurricular activity that's been occurring in this professor's (in question's) department. I know I wasn't imagining anything. Furthermore, there were other students in the class with the same interests and majors and only this one particular student, who was not academically superior or exemplary, was asked. You acknowledged that this does occur, so why must it have been in my imagination because I'm an older student?
Furthermore, the student was asked, unsolicited. She actively pursued the professor and engaged him in conversation after every class, and proceeded to follow him around until her next class. I've been in other classes with her in her own major, and she's never done that. The fact is that everything was initiated by this professor and not the students, old or young. If anything, I didn't give the impression that I was interested but she did. I didn't hang out in his office or make any extra effort to engage him in any way. I was picking up on what he was doing, which was flirting just like it was with the other student.I've had professors who were actually interested in my academic and career goals and that is not the way they approached the situation. You may not be sexist but clearly you have an age bias.
I'm 34 years old and because of illness when I was young I haven't dated much. I'm also really shy. I went back to school recently. I look young for my age and last fall had a semester long flirtation with a professor (40-ish) who thought I was in my 20s. I was really attracted to him but one night I got really anxious and accidentally insulted him-not verbally or anything like that. His whole attitude changed after that, and being a shy person, I was afraid to address the issue. I was in his class again this semester and he commented on the incident even though it really wasn't that bad-I walked out one night-right past him as he was giving back papers-because I panicked when I thought he was going to try to finally make a move of some sort(not physically). I'm still really attracted to him but I'm always afraid of rejection so I don't know how to really show someone I'm interested. So, this semester he found a new student. Sometimes I got the impression he was waiting for me to show that I was still interested. Anyway, she is 22 and she really knows how to play the game like I don't. I guess I was also afraid that if he knew my true age he wouldn't be interested anyway. I think he may have started dating this other student at the end of this semester and I'm absolutely miserable because I truly felt like we would have been compatible. I still feel like I want to tell him that I'm just shy not ignorant and I still would like to have a relationship but what good would it do now. I won't be in his classes again so I'll be at school but won't really have occasion to see him. Because of my work and school schedules I don't get to meet too many guys and especially none who share my interests like this guy seemed to. I'm having a really hard time with this because I know that it was my ineptitude that blew it, and even though I know there's not really anything I can do. Is there?
there are like a million things wrong with this.... good thing you "blew" it.
I'm a linguistics major but I took a concentration in cognitive science. That's what I'm really interested in and what I tried to get the research in. I've had to take a lot of psych courses, so you'd think I'd have some real insight into this.
Check back next semester and see if he has a new student. I find it odd that he's had a new one each of the last two semesters. He sounds like a player.
Actually, it wasn't the last 2 semesters. I don't know what happened in the intervening spring semester.
That smarts of an excuse. And truthfully, who hasn't been there? Who hasn't said, "Gosh, if I had only done xyz, this guy/girl would have fallen madly in love with me and we would have lived happily..."
If a man is interested in a woman, he will pursue her. Even if she behaves in a way that is uninterested, he will pursue her. I think you're extrapolating too much in this "connection" that you believe was there instead of facing the facts that he knew you (for some period of time, correct?) and did not choose to ask you out. He met this girl and DID choose to ask her out.
Sorry but there's absolutely nothing to do today so I got back on my rant. Anyway, yes this is true but I know that it would have made a difference because at the beginning of the semester he made a comment about the incident when I accidentally blew him off. Maybe he didn't want to be rejectef. Before he did take up with this other person I had a chance to try to rectify it and find out if he was interestes regardless of my age, and my own issues prevented that. That's what still bothers me.
Dating 101
Lesson 1: Most men aren't looking for a wife or looking to get married when dating. He is not looking for his next wife, he's looking for some fun.
I don't know that he's ever been married. Isn't so that at some point men have attained certain things and at a certain age they do want to get married? Isn't it possible that's his agenda?
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