Silent, manly tears neither exaggerated by sniffles nor hidden. Your face and voice state your existential crisis as-is, triggering a maternal reaction in your professor hastened by the fact that your countenance is utterly straight. You are very used to this. In fact, you can’t stop complaining! Abusing your professors’ pity is addictive. Crying during office hours—this is the familiar pinnacle of the student-teacher experience.
See, professors come to the 5Cs because they want to mentor undergraduates. Meaning, the time they spend listening to your pseudo-intellectual rambling could have been spent doing actual meaningful research, but they don’t, because they like feeling like saints above you and that feeling can be EXPLOITED.
You are emotionally depraved. You must be filled, and Prof. Something in your next class is the exact meal you need. So here’s a quick 4-Step guide to crying during office hours and getting the parental love you never received:
1. Embrace Negative Self-Talk
I personally advocate writing it down to physicalize it, but if writing gives you trauma, then just ruminating works fine I guess. Set a 30-minute timer before bed and write/ruminate as deep far down as you can go. “Before bed” is intentional—sleep deprivation helps. And when you wake up, read your latest entry in your hate-diary to start your day in the right mood.
2. Practice crying on your friends.
Like professors, your friends have emotional real estate laid aside for you. After sufficient practice negativizing, you should be able to coherently (or even better, incoherently) communicate the depth of your existential incompetence. Try a few different approaches to venting and make sure you’re testing on individuals to avoid group bias.
3. Do it. Go to office hours.
Make it natural, wait until the conversation reaches a topic concerning Choice and Inescapable Doom and Being Responsible for it. (The weeks leading up to class pre-registration are very good for this.) Then unleash yourself. I can’t give too-specific advice here since everyone’s struggle with the human condition is very different yet also exactly the same, but the things you learn about yourself during Step 2 should help.
4. REPEAT – OVER AND OVER
if you don’t have friends for Step 2 or professor for Step 3 anymore then talk to literally anyone who is unfortunate enough to sit down within earshot of you. You don’t need “friends,” anyone can be an earpiece. Remember, the goal is social incontinence. You are walking the quantum line between ever-increasing shame and ever-decreasing social self-control. Good luck, soldier.
