When Coeds Seduce Their Professors
I became a writing instructor at UC Extension without even trying. After finishing my course work at UC Berkeley graduate journalism school I wrote a series of articles for San Francisco magazine, including one about would-be Nazis in San Francisco and their little dog too, (Krieghund, the war dog).
The young instructor who had been teaching the magazine article writing course read my article and sought me out to tell me how much he had liked it. He said I had developed a "new writing technique." He was just talking about the clever headings I gave each new section of the story. A short while later he decided to leave Berkeley and teach at Sonoma State and he asked it I wanted to take over his magazine article writing class at UC Extension.
I said "sure," not knowing what I was really getting into. The fact was I hardly knew more than the students I was teaching. Many of them had studied creative writing or majored in English literature while I, as an undergraduate, had majored in mechanical engineering. But my writing had some creative elements and I knew something about reporting and making a story interesting. So I prepared this elaborate lesson plan and went over it and rehearsed it. I remember I showed up for class about half an hour early and then sat outside Dwinelle Hall with a lot of butterflies.
I had worried that not enough students would show up for the course and the school would cancel it. But to my astonishment there were 30 students, two-thirds of whom were women, especially women in their late twenties and early thirties. Plus a few guys.
I think I was pretty boring the first hour. I know about 45 minutes into my presentation a young man in the front row ostentatiously got up and left the class. Thinking I better pick it up, I sat down on the front of the desk and started telling stories. Well everyone likes a story and pretty soon, it seemed to me, I had the class’s attention. I remember a couple of young women in the front row looking up at me with what seemed to me to be the most sincere admiration.
This was the first time since high school that I had ever had a group of women paying so much attention to me (the first time was in high school after my senior day presentation as a beat poet). And I encouraged it. I remember at one point writing my name and phone number on the black board. "Now if you have a question about any of the assignments, this is my home number. Give me a call. If I’m busy, I’ll tell you."
I think the women in the class liked my class for another reason. It was a pass/fail course and all assignments were optional. "I’m here to help you," I told the students, "not the other way around. I know that there are many reasons why some of you might want to take this course. You want to write stories, you want to get published, you just enjoy being about writers and talking about writing. Whatever your motive is, it’s fine with me. If you want to do the assignments, you’ll have my sincere attention. But if you don’t, that’s okay too."
Of course, nearly everyone did all the assignments, just as I expected they would. And I did give them my sincere attention. In fact I bowled them over with attention. Unlike their college writing instructors who used to grade their essays with hardly more than I word or two of comment, I used to routinely type a whole page of comments, which I stapled to their papers when I handed them back.
Many of the students were revealing quite a lot about themselves and I did my best to encourage it. My comments were professional, not personal. But given the subject matter I think many of the women thought perhaps they had a special relationship with me. And then there’s the whole transference issue from analysis. When you talk with a sympathetic listener at great length about yourself, it’s not unusual to feel as if you’re falling in love with the other person. So here were my students, most of whom were women, writing numerous stories about themselves. And here I was, commenting on them at length.
Right from the beginning of that course, I noticed something in my own life had changed. After class or even at the break (it was a three hour class that met at night with a half hour break in the middle), I suddenly found I would have as many as half a dozen women crowding around for my attention. One day one of the women handed me a book. She was young and pretty and very outgoing but so were three or four others. I took the book ("The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed" by John McPhee) and read it that following week. Then I brought it back and gave it back to the woman I thought had handed it to me. She looked very surprised. "I didn’t give you that book," she said.
Then I noticed two seats over in that same row another young woman (with blond hair, very nice looking about 26 years old) was sitting there looking straight ahead, positively fuming. I gave the book to her and she accepted it. But she was clearly quite upset. I was puzzled. I had no idea why she was so mad but I was too busy to think anything more about it until she called me a few days later.
"Paul, this is Karen from the writing class." Her voice was almost devoid of affect. And she got right to the point. "I want to talk to you."
I couldn’t figure out why and she didn’t say. I figured perhaps she was still mad about the book thing and wanted to clear the air in person. As it turned out I was busy that day but I told her the following afternoon, which was a Saturday, would be fine.
"One o'clock?"
"Sure."
"See you then."
The next day at precisely one o'clock, there was a knock on the door. I opened it up and there Karen with her blond hair and green eyes, arms spread wide, a big smile and, in one hand, a bottle of wine.
That was a big surprise. I opened the wine and we sat on my living room floor and the wine and I quickly discovered that Karen didn’t want to talk about the class at all. In fact I got the distinct impression she was coming on to me. But as I was a "professor" and she was my student I though I must be misreading the situation. I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation or to offend her by making a pass.
Actually, it never came to that. As we were sitting on the floor facing each other with our legs crossed, she suddenly got this funny look on her face, made kind of a growling sound, half stood up, put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me over on my back and flopped full length on top of me.
At that point, there was no longer any doubt why she’d come over. And I led her into my bedroom where she insisted on undressing me first. I remember when I took off her clothes she was wearing white cotton panties, the old-fashioned high-waisted kind with pink roses. She smelled like talcum powder. She was really very sweet. I felt as if I were making love to a little girl, which perhaps was her intent.
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The young instructor who had been teaching the magazine article writing course read my article and sought me out to tell me how much he had liked it. He said I had developed a "new writing technique." He was just talking about the clever headings I gave each new section of the story. A short while later he decided to leave Berkeley and teach at Sonoma State and he asked it I wanted to take over his magazine article writing class at UC Extension.
I said "sure," not knowing what I was really getting into. The fact was I hardly knew more than the students I was teaching. Many of them had studied creative writing or majored in English literature while I, as an undergraduate, had majored in mechanical engineering. But my writing had some creative elements and I knew something about reporting and making a story interesting. So I prepared this elaborate lesson plan and went over it and rehearsed it. I remember I showed up for class about half an hour early and then sat outside Dwinelle Hall with a lot of butterflies.
I had worried that not enough students would show up for the course and the school would cancel it. But to my astonishment there were 30 students, two-thirds of whom were women, especially women in their late twenties and early thirties. Plus a few guys.
I think I was pretty boring the first hour. I know about 45 minutes into my presentation a young man in the front row ostentatiously got up and left the class. Thinking I better pick it up, I sat down on the front of the desk and started telling stories. Well everyone likes a story and pretty soon, it seemed to me, I had the class’s attention. I remember a couple of young women in the front row looking up at me with what seemed to me to be the most sincere admiration.
This was the first time since high school that I had ever had a group of women paying so much attention to me (the first time was in high school after my senior day presentation as a beat poet). And I encouraged it. I remember at one point writing my name and phone number on the black board. "Now if you have a question about any of the assignments, this is my home number. Give me a call. If I’m busy, I’ll tell you."
I think the women in the class liked my class for another reason. It was a pass/fail course and all assignments were optional. "I’m here to help you," I told the students, "not the other way around. I know that there are many reasons why some of you might want to take this course. You want to write stories, you want to get published, you just enjoy being about writers and talking about writing. Whatever your motive is, it’s fine with me. If you want to do the assignments, you’ll have my sincere attention. But if you don’t, that’s okay too."
Of course, nearly everyone did all the assignments, just as I expected they would. And I did give them my sincere attention. In fact I bowled them over with attention. Unlike their college writing instructors who used to grade their essays with hardly more than I word or two of comment, I used to routinely type a whole page of comments, which I stapled to their papers when I handed them back.
Many of the students were revealing quite a lot about themselves and I did my best to encourage it. My comments were professional, not personal. But given the subject matter I think many of the women thought perhaps they had a special relationship with me. And then there’s the whole transference issue from analysis. When you talk with a sympathetic listener at great length about yourself, it’s not unusual to feel as if you’re falling in love with the other person. So here were my students, most of whom were women, writing numerous stories about themselves. And here I was, commenting on them at length.
Right from the beginning of that course, I noticed something in my own life had changed. After class or even at the break (it was a three hour class that met at night with a half hour break in the middle), I suddenly found I would have as many as half a dozen women crowding around for my attention. One day one of the women handed me a book. She was young and pretty and very outgoing but so were three or four others. I took the book ("The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed" by John McPhee) and read it that following week. Then I brought it back and gave it back to the woman I thought had handed it to me. She looked very surprised. "I didn’t give you that book," she said.
Then I noticed two seats over in that same row another young woman (with blond hair, very nice looking about 26 years old) was sitting there looking straight ahead, positively fuming. I gave the book to her and she accepted it. But she was clearly quite upset. I was puzzled. I had no idea why she was so mad but I was too busy to think anything more about it until she called me a few days later.
"Paul, this is Karen from the writing class." Her voice was almost devoid of affect. And she got right to the point. "I want to talk to you."
I couldn’t figure out why and she didn’t say. I figured perhaps she was still mad about the book thing and wanted to clear the air in person. As it turned out I was busy that day but I told her the following afternoon, which was a Saturday, would be fine.
"One o'clock?"
"Sure."
"See you then."
The next day at precisely one o'clock, there was a knock on the door. I opened it up and there Karen with her blond hair and green eyes, arms spread wide, a big smile and, in one hand, a bottle of wine.
That was a big surprise. I opened the wine and we sat on my living room floor and the wine and I quickly discovered that Karen didn’t want to talk about the class at all. In fact I got the distinct impression she was coming on to me. But as I was a "professor" and she was my student I though I must be misreading the situation. I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation or to offend her by making a pass.
Actually, it never came to that. As we were sitting on the floor facing each other with our legs crossed, she suddenly got this funny look on her face, made kind of a growling sound, half stood up, put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me over on my back and flopped full length on top of me.
At that point, there was no longer any doubt why she’d come over. And I led her into my bedroom where she insisted on undressing me first. I remember when I took off her clothes she was wearing white cotton panties, the old-fashioned high-waisted kind with pink roses. She smelled like talcum powder. She was really very sweet. I felt as if I were making love to a little girl, which perhaps was her intent.
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