So my wife teaches at a college / trade school, and has worked there for about 5 years. Previously she was a field engineer with a lot of experience working with the trades. She prefers to be “one of the boys” but can also play the professional role.

So at first she figured “well we are all adults here” and treated everyone as peers who were there to learn. It didn’t take long for her to be frustrated and burned out. She told me it’s too hard emotionally to think of the students as people, much like how livestock cannot be pets (we have a farm, lol).

There’s an endless stream of them and some are good, some are bad, some don’t try and some give it their best but don’t have what it takes. Some ask her if she’s on Tinder or have an Onlyfans… Ick. You can’t get them all through the course and you can’t develop relationships with them or their stress and emotions will rub off on you.

So she started putting up this firm barrier where she is the teacher and they are the students. Changed her style of dress from business casual to “unapproachable career woman”, puts on that teacher attitude, and is enjoying her life a lot more.

However it results in that odd behaviour mentioned above. If we go out to a casual pub to eat pub food and drink beer, when one of her students walks in the door she’s practically hiding under the table. “They can’t see me like this! I don’t have my makeup on, I’m wearing jeans, I’m drinking beer from a can! They have to think of me as a teacher, not an ordinary person!”