The State of Hellos

Last week I had a very pleasant moment, when a student poked his head in just to say hello. That was it. It was just a hello and I loved it. When I was an undergraduate, aside from my senior thesis advisor my senior year, there was absolutely no professor with whom I would have felt comfortable enough to say hello, unless I had some business at hand. I love that my students feel comfortable with me and that they do want to have contact with me for no other reason, other than to wish me a nice day -- that their need for me is not just based on "I NEED MAJOR HELP NOW!" panic that I usually see.

This is very different from a different type of hello that I'm getting from a colleague. I'm starting to dread seeing this colleague's presence in the hallway because a hello from this person is not just a simple hello, but the start of a long and overly-winded, pointless conversation on nothing. I like chitchat just fine, but when I'm usually quite busy when I'm on campus and I don't have time for idle chitchat. Also, I don't particularly care to talk about the issues that this colleague wants to talk about. I'm not in a position to cut off the chitchat because of the "issues" that came up for my reappointment file. One of my weaknesses, according to the committee, was that I needed to be more collegial and spend more time talking with my colleagues. It's not that I was being rude, but they noted that I did not spend enough time making small talk with my colleagues.

Now I need to add making chitchat on my list of things-to-do. Should it come before or after teaching, research, and service? So far, it's been coming after those three items, which means that often at the end of the day, I haven't gotten around to doing it. I guess I need to re-prioritize my duties.