Spotlight On Composition Teachers
Gina Patterson
Office Space: Perceptions of the Personalized Door
An imposing cardstock sign reads: “Enter at your own risk.” Another cluttered with clippings from various newspapers play on the sir name, Floyd: “Dirty DJ Floyd, Every Wednesday Night,” next to album covers of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Down the hall a tenure-track professor’s door displays professional black-and-white photos of Malcom X, Martin Luther King Jr., Tina Turner. Cattycorner is a graduate student office littered with bumper stickers which read: “Hot Tom’s Tomato’s” and “Drink a Pepper: Dr. Pepper.” Still, another door is left bare except for two 2x4 yellow pieces of paper denoting the office hours of graduate English instructors. What do these varying displays of cultural artifacts mean? For whom are these displayed? What is the purpose behind the office door persona and does this reflect the actual persona of the instructor? Finally, what does such a personal exhibit imply about the institution of teaching?
On the whole, it seems that one of the reasons instructors decorate their doors with paraphernalia is to welcome their students, whether that be with a fun blurb which suggests that they too are human or a more political gesture of diversity such as the Safe Zone triangle. Another function of personal artifacts is that they also seem to lessen the power dynamic between student and teacher. Signs which poke fun at the instructor’s profession indicate that an instructor’s in-class persona is very different, or at the least, is less serious than their out-of-class persona. For instance, a colleague of mine, who focuses on feminist rhetoric, placed a sign with bold letters which read: “IDON’T OJECTIFY WOMEN.” Dry as the humor was, such a sign no doubt lessened the anxiety levels of her students who felt uncomfortable sharing ideas in the classroom. Such a student, upon approaching her office door, might read this sign as an olive branch, an indication that humor has its place -- even the very serious discourse of feminist rhetoric. On the other hand, an office door which contains no personal artifacts will enhance the feeling of unease the student may have about his or her instructor and will leave the student with a feeling of inaccessibility. To a student, a blank door is similar to an expressionless face. When one is searching for something – anything -- that might create a bond between teacher and student, a blank door serves as an indication of the unknown and the chasm widens. Thus, the office door can function to either level the playing field a bit or further entrench the student-teacher dichotomy.
Aside from personal artifacts, the office door might contain other useful tools for the student such as a sign with office hours posted, a name plate, and a room number. The room number is essential if an instructor’s goal is to have students actually visit their office. Thus, when the office number sign is missing or say, one digit has faded or is turned upside-down, a student will often feel frustrated at the instructor and a sense of trust between the two is lost. To illustrate, during my time as an M.A. at Kent State, I encountered a student who approached me grudgingly saying, “I tried to find your office, but there wasn’t a sign!” Funny, but until this student pointed it out, I had never noticed: My sign, 209B, instead of being nailed to the door (as were the many others), was leaning on top of the doorframe – a location which, unless one is over seven feet tall, one wouldn’t likely see. Needless to say, I had trouble encouraging that student to return to my office hours.
Since offices are usually in a confusing, non-visitor-friendly cluster, it is often a nice gesture when an instructor or the institution has provided a name plate for the office door. Thanks to funding, vandalism, or shared office space, the name plates on the office door have decreased in popularity. The key for most students, however, are the office hours, which are usually posted on the door. When a sign with office hours is missing or is out-dated, a student will take this as an indication that the instructor is unapproachable. Of course, a student will hold high expectations of the instructor: If the office hours say MWF 10-12PM and an instructor leaves the office at 11:45 a.m., the student will often hold the teacher accountable and will be less than likely to show up to office hours in the future.
For an instructor, such displays of personal paraphernalia have different functions. Though one of the functions of office paraphernalia is to reach out to or inhibit students, this paraphernalia can function to create a sense of community with the instructor’s peers. For example, the Safe Zone triangle or signs which read “No War in Iraq” serve as a filtering system for peers. I was able to see this process in action during the spring of 2003, when the invasion of Iraq began. Kent State’s faculty seemed torn between their perceived duty as both citizens and “keepers of the peace”. Many faculty members thought it bad form to hang anti-war slogans on their door and yet, every once and again, I would walk past an office, such as Florence Doore’s and see her large poster-board sign which read: “STOP THE INVAISON OF IRAQ!” As a graduate student and thus non-tenured instructor, I quietly cheered such bold political displays and felt more of an affinity towards Florence. Of course, that same sign held different meanings for others in our community. For example, one G.A. whose husband was stationed in Iraq, found the display to be unprofessional and disrespectful. Thus, the more controversial the items are which hang on the door, the more an instructor gives off the message that their social groups are limited to a select few who identify with their belief systems. There are, of course, less controversial items which instructors place on their doors to create a conversation with the rest of their peers. For example, bumper stickers, cartoons, and postcards may serve as a segue to social interaction.
Of course the mere act of having personal artifacts displayed or not displayed on the door also says something about the instructor and their willingness to participate as a member of an academic community. Those who don’t have articles on their door might, for instance, be new or not feel at home in their department. In addition, instructors who have more than one office on campus or a home office might be less likely to decorate the office in which they spend the least amount of time. Finally, choosing to display or not display certain items on the office door might express ambivalence to the office space in general. For example, if an instructor chooses not to post his or her office hours, this may be a sign that he or she resents the university’s office-hour requirements. This might also be an indication that an instructor holds his or her office hours outside of the confines of the institutionalized office. I must admit here that I have been guilty of such a party faux pas. For an entire semester, my undecorated door held a 2x4 card of out-dated office hours. Was it necessarily because I was a horrible, inaccessible teacher? Nope. The fact of the matter was that, since I shared my office and desk with six other individuals and since I taught in a building way the hell out of the way, I held my office hours after class in Franklin hall. In reality, such an act on my part made me more accessible to my students and able to assist them, without one of my many officemates snickering while reading The Onion in the background. I suppose my neglected office door in Satterfield was a battle cry: “Give us a damned office in Franklin! (I mean, the math department gets one…).”
Aside from their more apparent functions, certain symbols or artifacts can also stand in direct opposition to the institution of academia. In fact, it seems that the majority of items posted on office doors actually suggest a lack in the academic community. Leaving only the small space of the office door to show one’s personality seems to suggest that, on the whole, instructors feel that their self and their teaching persona are at odds with one another. And while such artifacts can be used to create bonds between peers and students, the office door can turn into the silent partner in one’s teaching persona. It would seem that instructors would be less likely to need to make an office-door-connection with their co-workers and students if they were able to do so in the classroom and in departmental meetings. Indeed, while personalizing the office door does seem like a fun activity, the act itself might be an indication of the passivity (or passive-aggressiveness) of the academic community and/or the oppressiveness of a seemingly liberal learning environment.
This is perhaps a sign that as teachers, we need to move beyond the passive and establish real relationships with our students and peers. But is this necessarily an easy task to accomplish? There are, of course, bi-monthly socials, seasonal parties, and, at the graduate level, an occasional friendship between student and professor, but these interactions do not address the pervading absence of community within academia. Perhaps the problem lies at the root of Western teaching strategies, where product and qualifying exams take the place of real learning and fellowship. In our society, when friendships bleed into the classroom, when a teacher or student “reveals too much,” a line has been crossed, a code of ethics transgressed.
In fact, the very institution of the university removes the personal from the learning environment. Eager students no longer rap at the door of a mentor’s home, nor would they spend long periods of time residing with them as an apprentice. It seems that academia has completely severed the tie between affect and intellect. The results of this movement in learning speak for themselves: In the classroom, both teacher and student worry over product. Trained in such a way, a student stares at a blank sheet of paper, worried over the words that might spill onto the page, afraid they might be too personal, too messy. The student’s teacher worries about progress, about time in the day, about how much she can teach in three days a week for fifty minutes periods. Within that fifty minutes, pressed for time, it seems a given that personality and true creativity will be stifled. There is simply little room. Indeed, it seems that the office door is a final remnant of the relationship between affect and intellect. As a revolutionary, perhaps it is a call for change in a product-oriented academia.