Repairing Professional Relationships

Well I ran into Colin today. It was very awkward.

I went to the PSU alumni gathering earlier tonight, and I was chatting with a few people when I just happened to look over. There was Colin.

He looked at me, looked away, looked back at me, and looked away. Then he proceeded to ignore me for the whole night. The only time he acknowledged my presence at all was when we passed each other on the stairs, and we forced a "Hey."

I really don't understand why he's acting like that. Either he really, really didn't like me, or he knew that I had a thing for him. I'm not sure how he would have found out that I had a thing for him, because it wasn't something that I had talked about with any of my colleagues. So probably he really hadn't liked me, and he had just been one more person who had fooled me, by being friendly and joking around with me when I took his class.

Anyway, I have further insight as to why the people said it was good to see me. Earlier today I ran into my old professor. This is the professor who had been extremely mad at me over field camp, who had threatened to send me home over that whole nasty business with the car. Ever since then it has been really awkward whenever I've seen him.

When I saw him, I tried my best to be pleasant and engage him in conversation. He did not say that it was good to see me. In fact, he kind of dismissed me after briefly chatting with me.

After this interaction I felt kind of bad about myself. I had made a mistake, yes. I had allowed my "friends" to persuade me, against my better judgment, to drive them to Salt Lake City on our free day when we weren't supposed to. Then on the next free day, I had gone nutso and driven an hour to a Starbucks (in my defense, I wasn't about to go hang out in the only coffee shop in the town, because all the TA's were there grading and in bad moods. And I didn't want to see them anyway because I was mad at all of them. And I'm fucking addicted to Starbucks coffee and they do not have it in the West unless you go to a big city). At the time I realized it was a bad mistake. It had been irresponsible of me. However, I didn't fully realize the extent of my mistake until today. The full extent of my mistake was that I had damaged a relationship with my teacher, who has now become more of a business colleague. Great job, Veronica.

So I asked my friend Erin how to best interact with someone who doesn't like you. Erin is a PhD student in my field who is really smart. She told me that time heals all wounds, and that the best thing I could say to him would be to tell him that I had learned a lot from him and that I was glad to see him.

So that got me thinking that maybe, those other people I saw who I thought didn't like me... maybe they actually do like me. But they think I don't like them. Maybe that's why they're saying it was good to see me-- they don't want there to be any negativity between us in the future.

And I'm fine with that. My main reason for not liking them in the first place was because I thought they didn't like me. If they actually do like me, then that's stupid. Or maybe they're trying to give me another chance because they see that we are interacting in the professional world. Who knows.

All I know is, I want to have better relationships with my old professors and colleagues. I have good relationships with a lot of them, but on the other hand there are a few too many who don't want to talk to me when they see me. I don't know what I did to give the professors that impression (aside from the one mentioned above). I've always been a good student-- hard-working and asking lots of questions-- so it wouldn't have been about my academic performance. But whatever it is, I want to fix it.

At this point in my life I've come to think of my professors as friends/colleagues/mentors. I used to think that they were scary and that I was only supposed to think of them as my professors. But that's the wrong attitude. Because when you come across them in the business world, you want them to smile and be genuinely happy to see you. You don't want them to pretend not to see you, or blow you off, or avoid you. I wish somebody had told me this when I was doing my undergrad, but maybe it's something I had to learn myself from making mistakes.