CHISTYAKOV: Here vs. There

My high school is a very tight-knit community in the suburbs of Los Angeles. My graduating class is fewer than 150 kids, and we were all friendly with each other. Since my school was so small, it was very easy to find all of my teachers on campus, and whenever I sent out an email, I received an answer within the hour.

So when I receive an email from a professor at Boston University with the closing statement, “Email me if you have any questions,” I feel very encouraged to reach out to him or her.

After missing a class, I immediately email my professor asking what I had missed. When I don’t receive an answer the next day, I email my teaching assistant to ask the same question. I wait and I wait and I wait, constantly checking my phone for a notification, a sign that my teachers in college will be as responsive as they were in high school. But I don’t receive a response from either.

Confused, I find a tech savvy student living on my floor and ask, “I think my email is broken. Can you fix it?” He checks the settings on my phone and sees that there is nothing wrong, and after much badgering from my side, he sends me a test email that goes through easily. Before I admit the ghastly truth, I say, “Maybe my professor’s email is broken and so he can’t reply to my email.” Tech savvy guy disagrees, saying that if there was something wrong with a teacher’s email, IT support would take care of it within minutes. His tone implies that I need a reality check. Maybe my teacher is ignoring me.

Coming from such a small school, this is hard to comprehend. We never needed a lecture hall or an auditorium because every class had fewer than 20 students. All of my teachers knew my full name, where my family is from, my dad’s name, my nephew’s name, what my favorite food is, whether I prefer Coke or Pepsi and many other details about my life. They took the time to get to know me since they had very few students to teach.

Everything was intermixed and simple. Jumping from this lifestyle to one where barely any of my teachers know my name, let alone if I show up to class every day, is very distressing. Of course, every teacher and TA has office hours where students can easily find them and ask any questions they may have. But coming from a school where all of my teachers worked in the same office, this system doesn’t help my bewilderment. I understand that professors at BU teach many different classes and thus have to deal with many more students, but how can I transition to a school where my professors teach classes that hold more students than my graduating class?

Within a few weeks, I know I’ll adapt to attending such a large school. Soon, I won’t be so overwhelmed by the mass of students I see walking down Commonwealth Avenue every day — all it will take is time and an open mind to experiencing something new. And I know that eventually it will become easier to take initiative and track down my teachers for an answer to a simple question. Ignored emails will no longer slip by so easily.

Rachel Chistyakov is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Fall 2012 columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at rachelch@bu.edu.