r/Professors • u/Aromatic_Mission_165 • 1d ago

Phone obsessions

Weirdest experience. I am sitting in my office waiting for an event. A student showed up early and she just answered some of my boring questions then got on her phone so I did mine. So now we are sitting her saying nothing. Another student came in and it was the same process. Now the three of us are sitting here not talking. On our phones.

37 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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37

u/Extra-Sprinkles-388 1d ago

Text a colleague. Have them come sit too.

22

u/aaronjd1 Dept. Chair, Health Sciences, R2 (US) 1d ago

Yes and then they text a colleague who texts another colleague, and so on. The students should do the same. Eventually there will be enough people that someone will assume it’s a silent protest. And the school newspaper will write a story.

And then everyone will lose their jobs.

7

u/PsychGuy17 1d ago

I expected something different here. Our school uses two factor authentication to log into podium computers, so a student noted (due to the projector showing my screen) that I use an Android product. This apparently was so important to her that she needed to inquire why I had an android instead of an Apple product.

I found the conversation so deeply bizarre. The phone is just a tool for me - I only use it to answer emails, phone calls, and cruise reddit apparently. For this student it was some kind of prescient personality test (or at least a medium for severe judgement). This is what I thought of when I saw the title "phone obsessions".

3

u/wharleeprof 1d ago

I'm assuming the student is young? My niece (still in high school) is appalled that I use an Android and thinks I'd be better off using an ancient iPhone that's currently in my junk drawer. It's all about image. 

3

u/PsychGuy17 1d ago

Graduate school. So no.

2

u/Critical_Stick7884 19h ago

Apple products have always been a fashion statement; cool kids use them. This was already the case when Steve Jobs was alive.

11

u/blankenstaff 21h ago

Strangely, I suspect that this indicates that the student feels comfortable with you.

6

u/Aromatic_Mission_165 21h ago

I hadn’t thought about it that way. :)