Professor–Student Interaction in the Midst of Illness: A Collaborative Autoethnography

Alicia

It was early in the day and I had just responded to a few of Tiffany’s questions about medicalization for an exam I was giving her medical sociology class the following afternoon. I forgot about this interaction until Tiffany reminded me to be sure to include it in our article as a preview for what lies ahead.

Subject line: Questions about exam 2

Hi Dr. Smith-Tran,

Thank you for your reply. I also wanted to email you about a current health issue I’m having right now. For the past two weeks I’ve had acid-reflux symptoms that have been painful but tolerable.

However, I decided to return home this weekend because of my frequent heart burns and chest pains, and lack of being able to breathe normally. My parents and I are hoping I could stay home tomorrow and Tuesday so they can look after me in case things get worse. I know the exam is tomorrow, and I understand if you won’t want to give an extension. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

Thank you again for your time, and I hope to see you soon.

Tiffany Hang

I knew that when Tiffany came to my office or sent me an email it was never to ask for extra credit points—she studied tirelessly and was genuinely inquisitive—driven by her intellectual curiosity. But despite Tiffany’s deviation from many students whom Armstrong and Hamilton (2015) would describe as being on the “party pathway” who spend copious energy on Greek Life and the social scene, in the moment of reading her email I perceived that she was just another overachieving undergraduate student: anxious for an exam, overworked from pre-med coursework, and consumed with the pursuit of academic excellence. I took a break from folding laundry, put my imaginary professor hat on, and quickly responded to her email on my phone.

Sunday, October 21. 10:10 a.m.

Hi Tiffany,

I’m sorry to hear that you haven’t been feeling well. Unfortunately I can’t give an extension unless you have a doctor’s note. I’ll have my fingers crossed that you are feeling better soon!

Dr. Smith-Tran

Tiffany has since forgiven me for my inflexibility, and often jests about it, but I still feel guilt at my dismissiveness as she experienced her first cancer symptoms, even if neither of us knew at the time that that was the case.

Fast forward two months, and this is where I would have started the article, had I written it alone. My first semester on the tenure track just ended. I posted final grades and could finally exhale, taking a break from the grind of prepping new courses and making first impressions. Despite the term being over, I incessantly and unthinkingly checked my email. On this particular day, my obsessive email checking had an unexpected result. I jerked out of my zombie-like, pseudo-conscious email reading mode.

Thursday, December 20, 2018, 12:57 p.m.

Subject line: Tiffany Hang | News

Good afternoon Dr. Smith-Tran,

I hope you’re having a good break so far. There is something I’d like to talk to you about, but I prefer to say it over the phone. Is there any way we can set up a time to talk?

Thank you!

This was not the usual email I received from students with questions about grades. I knew this was different as soon as I saw the subject line. My body tensed with uncertainty. Had she been assaulted? Was she facing severe financial issues? Why was my mind jumping to the darkest scenarios? Maybe she received an internship, or landed a position as a medical scribe. But why would she need to talk on the phone about a professional stepping stone? Perhaps she needed a letter of recommendation and does not yet know that it is acceptable to make “the ask” over email. The pinball machine in my mind pinged uncontrollably in every which way thinking about what she could possibly want to talk about. Meanwhile, my hands were frozen on the controls.

“Do I give her my cell phone number?” I asked my husband as I stared at the screen. This whole semester I felt like I was playing a professor in a 24/7 improv show, continually stumbling into my next maneuver. I know some faculty members provide their personal contact information to students—some even include their cell number on their syllabi—but as “cool” as I would like to think I am, I was not ready to be that accessible. I was hesitant to open the door to emojis and emotive acronyms at any time of day.

“Create a phone number with Google Voice for her to contact you,” my husband recommended. I had never heard of Google Voice before, so he had to walk me through the set-up.

“I’ll make this my special cell phone number for students,” I thought. “It will be Dr. Smith-Tran’s cell phone number, for emergency use only.”

Thursday, December 20, 2018, 1:43 p.m.

Hi Tiffany,

Sure we can talk. Are you okay? You can call me at 682-231-xxxx. I am available most of the day so just call me whenever. If I miss you I’ll call you back.

Dr. Smith-Tran

***

Previous research has examined the experiences of those who survive childhood cancers (e.g., Gerhardt et al. 2007; Jones, Parker-Raley, and Barczyk 2011; Parry 2003; Parry and Chesler 2005; Yi, Kim, and An 2015), and the challenges associated with having cancer as a young adult (Donovan-Kicken, Tollison, and Goins 2012; Iannarino, Scott, and Shaunfield 2017). However, with few exceptions (e.g., Irving, Snyder, and Crowson 1998), academic exploration of living through cancer while enrolled as a college student is sparsely undertaken—in part because this experience is relatively rare. About 4 percent of all cancer diagnoses are among those between the ages of 20 and 39 (American Cancer Society 2019), with only 1 percent of new diagnoses occurring among those younger than 20 years old (National Cancer Institute 2015). Tiffany, unfortunately, became a part of this one percent.

Tiffany and I are not the first to venture into describing the interactions between professor and student in the midst of coping with serious illness and its aftermath. For example, in “Heartful Autoethnography,” Ellis (1999) describes a conversation with a student who is writing her dissertation on breast cancer, and Ellis urges the student to embrace her own illness experience to create an autoethnographic text that was not only analytical, but affective as well. However, few have jumped into the endeavor of writing multi-vocally, collaborating in order to better articulate how these two experiences collide from both points of view. By documenting our thought processes through this event, we hope we can provide a voice to the infrequently described aspects of this unique, yet relatable experience. We shed light on the performative and relational aspects of occupying different statuses: health statuses, academic statuses, and differing positions in the life course. As Denzin (2014), writes, “the goal of auto-ethnography is to write…texts [that] move others to ethical action” (p. 70), which is what we seek to do in pushing individuals to consider how our professional and personal “hats” should not be discrete in order to move toward more humanistic interactions in academia.

Although professors will likely interact with very few students who have cancer throughout their careers, COVID-19 has brought about new challenges for professors in navigating their relationships with students in the midst of health crises, making the statements put forth in this article all the more pressing for college instructors. We argue that taking a humanistic approach in student-professor interactions has become increasingly important during unpredictable, life changing times.

***

Tiffany

It was about a week before Christmas, and my first weekend at home since completing the fall semester of my sophomore year at TCU. As alleviated as I was to be home after a rigorous semester, my body felt slightly off. On Saturday, I noticed that my neck was feeling stiff. I convinced myself that it was from awkwardly positioning my neck while sleeping and stuck a hot pad on it. “It will go away by tomorrow,” I told myself.

By Sunday, my neck grew more inflexible. I carried on with my day as I was excited for my best friend’s graduation party that night. However, an hour before her party started, a lump suddenly emerged on my neck. Still unconvinced it was anything serious, I prepared for the celebration. Putting on my champagne-hued embroidered jumpsuit, I attempted to zip it up. As I reached my arm back to touch the metal zipper, I could not reach it because of the size of the bulge on my neck. I tried to forget about it, but my concern lingered in the back of my mind at the party.

By Monday night, the swelling burgeoned. I had no clue what was happening to my body. As a pre-medical student, I had the privilege of knowing a doctor who I shadowed. I urgently sent her a picture of my neck from my phone, hoping she had an answer. She texted back saying, “Come to my office at 8 AM tomorrow.” Nothing more. I began to panic. Overwhelmed with anxiety, I ran out of my room to show my mom the text messages. She remained oddly composed and reassured me that it was going to be okay. Considering that mothers seem to know best, I took her word for it and attempted to get some rest.

On Tuesday, the sun began to rise—a peaceful, serene sunrise that usually eases my mind as I start my day. Albeit the same sun, this sunrise was different. Rather than the morning rays that bore a sense of hope and gentle anticipation for the day ahead, the sharp and brilliant sun brought feelings of nausea, nervousness, and tension as I unceasingly speculated about what was happening to my body.

My mom and I drove into the doctor’s office parking lot. I hopped out of the car and checked in. Chock-full with anticipation, I jumped out of my seat as soon as the medical assistant opened the door to call me in. Before they placed me into a patient room, the assistant got my vitals. Trying to distract myself, I attempted to focus on the squeezing of the blood pressure cuff. As it pulsated against my arm, I tried to catch my breath as a cheap attempt of mindful meditation. Despite numerous efforts to forget, the machineries within my mind continued to turn, creating petrifying scenarios of what could be. I made it through what felt like the longest CT scan of my life and anxiously awaited the results.

After a few hours of waiting, my phone rang:

“The results of the CT scan just came back. It could be an infection, but I really think it is cancer. It looks like lymphoma, Tiffany,” my doctor said.

It felt as if someone had sucker punched me in the gut. I was numb and in pain all at the same time. Crying uncontrollably and in complete denial I spit out, “Are you sure it is cancer? It has to be an infection. I am only nineteen. What happens now?” My doctor told me that I needed to get a needle-guided biopsy to solidify a cancer diagnosis, and determine the type. In the meantime, she wanted me to relax and enjoy the holidays with my family. But I was so far-removed from relaxing. Like a jammed water pipe about to rupture, my mind began to burst at the seams with heavy questions: How will being a full-time college student fit with being a cancer patient? Am I going to be alive a few months from now? Who will I confide in about this horrible news? Who can I talk to at school who will empathize with me? I never imagined that I would be a 19-year-old cancer patient. This only happens in the movies.

For the moment, I knew I wanted to keep my illness entourage small. I already told my two closest friends about the previous eventful days, but no one else. The light bulb in my head ignited with a brilliant idea: I needed to call Dr. Smith-Tran. I took her medical sociology class under the assumption that it would be advantageous as a pre-medicine student, but after just a few lectures I became exceedingly interested in sociology’s emphasis on social and cultural aspects of healthcare, and viewing patients more holistically—as people. My present situation felt like a documentary she would probably show in her class.

Dr. Smith-Tran is someone who I am close to but also distanced. I hoped that her educational background, expertise, and life experiences could provide me with unbiased guidance. In addition, as a student of color at TCU, I seldom got to work and be educated by professors who are women of color. Dr. Smith-Tran quickly became one of my professors whom I could relate to and wanted to be like in the future. I felt that it would help me cope if I reached out to her, and believed that she would be able to empathize with what I was going through. I longed for her to give me advice as a medical sociologist and a mentor on how to navigate college while being chronically ill.

I did not want to abruptly tell her over an email that I probably have cancer. The appropriate way to deliver such delicate news was by doing it over the phone, but I did not have her personal phone number. I picked up my cell phone and hastily composed a vague email asking if it would be okay for me to call her.

Almost an hour later, a loud dinging noise amplified from my phone. The highly anticipated reply with her cell phone number arrived in my inbox. After reading her reply, I got the impression that she may have been confused and freaked out about my email. I dialed her number. After a few attempts to reach her, the other side of the line finally picked up and I heard a familiar and comforting voice saying “Hello.” During our hour-long conversation, I gave Dr. Smith-Tran the abridged version of the past few days. I proceeded to tell her that my doctor believed that it is cancer, with an insignificant chance that it could be an infection. Dr. Smith-Tran remained optimistic that it would be an infection and not cancer, and requested that I keep her posted on the doctors’ findings.

Instead of ringing in the New Year with friends, January first kicked off with a hospital door swinging open to meet my newly appointed oncologist. Trying to analyze her facial expressions, I began to tremble with fear. Her presence meant that she had my official diagnosis. She uttered the sentence that I feared the most:

Tiffany, you have non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The next day, I texted my two closest friends to tell them the devastating news. After hours of sobbing, I decided it was time to tell Dr. Smith-Tran the verdict. I knew she was waiting for some news, but I do not think she was anticipating this. When the hospital seemed to be asleep, I grabbed my phone and began to compose an email:

Wednesday, January 2, 2019, 12:21 a.m.

Subject line: Tiffany Hang | Update 1/2/19

Hi Dr. Smith-Tran,

I apologize for not emailing you about any updates. It looks like we got the news we didn’t want. My oncologist told me two days ago that I have non-Hodgkin’s diffused B cell lymphoma. There seems to be a possible cyst in my breast from the lymphoma—we are still waiting on my PET scan. If it is, I will be diagnosed with “Stage IV.” The doctors assured me that the treatment should be the same as it would be for Stage I.

I wanted to email you to let you know since I haven’t been able to call, and won’t be able to tomorrow I think because I will be getting surgery to get a central port. My oncologists will start me on chemotherapy Thursday or Friday…scary.

I am nervous about what the next six months will look like, and how I will be able to continue with school. My oncologist approved of me changing to part-time for nine credit hours. I was hoping I could talk to you soon for some advice as my professor/role model (and friend) on what to do and how to approach this, etc. I am going to bed now, but I hope to hear from you soon when I am awake from surgery.

Best,

Tiffany Hang

At 8:34 a.m., Dr. Smith-Tran responded back:

Hi Tiffany,

Thank you for updating me. I am so saddened that you have to endure all of this. Life is so very unfair. But I remain truly optimistic that you are getting the best possible care, you have a great support system, you are young, you are determined, and you can get better.

Feel free to call whenever you’d like and feel up to it, but don’t feel badly if you don’t get a chance if things get busy or you aren’t feeling well. I’m always happy to chat about your school plans (or anything else) but don’t worry about that too much at this moment—minimize stress the best you can and get healthy.

Keep me posted. Thinking of you and sending all the good vibes.

Before I got the chance to respond to her email, they were rolling me downstairs to prepare for surgery so a central port could be placed in my chest to start chemotherapy. I decided that I would call Dr. Smith-Tran the next day. Aggravated by the syncopated beeping emitted from the IV machine, I grabbed the dangling wires attached to my chest and moved toward the hospital couch to sit down and dial her number.

January 3, 2019

Alicia

Before I know it, I am crying audibly on the phone. I had been waiting to hear back from Tiffany after she initially discovered the mysterious lump, checking my email more than usual and being more attentive to my phone. When she emailed me about her diagnosis, I was stunned and devastated for her, but the voice in my head could narrate her email in her cheery office hours tone that allowed me to numb myself to the heaviness of what she was saying. But hearing her emotionally drained and distressed voice on the phone, I was no longer able to distance myself with the social and physical barriers of email. I tried to hold it in, keep my composure, and stay “professional” in order to provide the rock-solid mentorship Tiffany needed in this moment, but she could surely tell I was ugly crying as she spoke to me.

How can this wide-eyed, hardworking young woman have advanced-stage cancer? The student who attends every class, completes all of the assigned reading, has big life plans, loves her family wholeheartedly, and is genuinely kind? She is one of the good ones: I had no doubt she was destined to make the world a better place. Now I was worried the world would be deprived of her future contributions.

I was so grateful she wanted to call me, of all people, to discuss this. But also, why me? Am I equipped to mentor her at this critical juncture in her life? Does my training as a medical sociologist qualify me for the type of support that she is seeking? Is this even mentorship, or something else? My toddler was crying in the other room, and here I am out-crying him. If this is happening after my first semester as a faculty member, what does the rest of my career have in store? Who knew this is what being a professor entailed. My comprehensive exams did not cover this.

Tiffany

I pressed the red button on my phone to end our call. Releasing a heavy breath, this uncharted territory in my interactions with professors was the gulp of fresh air I did not know I needed. I was astounded by my phone call with Dr. Smith-Tran. After confiding in her about my life-changing and possibly debilitating diagnosis, she cried. It was an unexpected but exceptionally meaningful reaction to the unfortunate news. I never imagined a professor crying about me. At that moment, I knew that Dr. Smith-Tran is more than just my sociology professor; she is a professor who cares for my well-being and future.

Before having cancer, I did not consciously consider the taken-for-granted boundaries between a student and professor we are subconsciously socialized to abide by. In the moment that I heard her cry, I felt that we had breached the invisible boundary of the typical student-professor relationship. Cancer changed the game, and I began thinking about the emerging complexities of my relationship with Dr. Smith-Tran and my other professors. When is it socially acceptable to divulge the in-depth details of my life with my professors?

Alicia

Opinions vary on what an appropriate and effective professor-student relationship “should” look like. I find myself drawing and moving new lines in the sand every day. Hawk and Lyons (2008) suggest adopting an “ethic of care” that necessitates projecting a loving demeanor for students, supporting them in their academic successes and failures. These scholars advocate for minimizing social distance and treating the relationship as a near-neutral adult-adult dyad that is by and large void of status differentiations that are often laid bare in professor-student interactions. Under this belief system, getting to know students as people is important in order to best serve their educational experience more holistically, rather than seeing them in a vacuum of the 50 minutes per faculty member may see them each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I have always felt different from those in academia who define themselves so strongly by their professions. Being a sociologist is what I do for a living. I am passionate about teaching and mentorship, I genuinely enjoy research, and I approach my work with sincerity, energy, and goodwill, but it is not who I am. I am a parent, spouse, friend, daughter, sister, and person with complex emotions, fears, joys, and long to-do lists. Likewise, my students fulfill many roles with copious feelings and obligations: they are parents, offspring, siblings, friends; happy, sad, excited, scared; healthy, ill, coping, grieving; why would I treat them solely as Student ID# 123 who is enrolled in my course? For many if not most students, the 50 minutes I see them each day is a blip on the screen of their lives.

To be sure, my inclination toward a less distanced approach to dealing with students is not based solely on personality and my disposition toward work. A variety of social forces have facilitated a shift toward closer relations between students and faculty, and a culture that encourages faculty to get to know students outside of the classroom and as holistic human beings. Shifts in dominant culture concerning what constitutes being an “adult,” a rise in “helicopter parents,” and a “marketing orientation” in higher education wherein some students expect faculty to cater to their individual needs have all contributed to trends toward personalizing the student-faculty relationship (Chory and Offstein 2017). Social media further complicates students’ and professors’ perceptions of what constitutes ideal interactional behavior, as students and professors sometimes “follow” one another on social media platforms. This can make students feel as though they are “friends” with their professors (DiVerniero and Hosek 2011), and can blur the line between front stage and backstage performances (Goffman 1959). While there will always be a range in faculty and students’ comfort level in what one reveals to the other, research suggests that on the whole, the balance is tilting towards openness and transparency as the culture of higher education continues to be shaped by dominant culture’s omnipresent technology and facilitation of “oversharing” (Agger 2015).

As a 32-year-old woman of color and early-career faculty member with a relatively youthful appearance, I have thought a great deal about how I am perceived by students and peers (Smith-Tran 2020). The way that students in the classroom and faculty in meetings react to me can have important implications regarding my perceived effectiveness as a teacher, colleague, and researcher—all of which are central to my ability to feel comfortable at work, perform to the best of my ability, and earn tenure. It is well-documented that women faculty of color in particular are disproportionately treated and assessed in an unfair manner by students (Fries and McNinch 2003; Hamermesh and Parker 2005; Pittman 2010), and are vulnerable to mistreatment by colleagues (Turner 2002). These dynamics can potentially put even more pressure on women of color in the academy to be conscientious of how they portray themselves, and to attempt to balance coming off as friendly, approachable, and cool, yet professional, sturdy, and stoic (Smith-Tran 2020). Research indicates that simultaneously, women faculty of color are often burdened with the expectation that they serve as exemplar role models, particularly for students of color (Thomas and Hollenshead 2001). In sum, women of color faculty are grappling with a complex array of performative and relational dynamics that can be further complicated when interacting with a student in the midst of a health crisis.

The way I dress, the language I employ, and even the title that I use (e.g., Dr. Smith-Tran to students, Alicia to colleagues, most family, and friends, and Mama to my son), varies depending on the “face”—to employ Goffman’s (1959) interactionist term—that I am trying to manage in a particular social situation. I have always had a laid back disposition and enjoy learning about others’ lives, so toeing the line between “professional” and “personal” can be a challenging dance. Tiffany’s illness pushed me to grow and expand my thinking about the range of professional-personal interactional choreography, and forced me to leap back and forth across the stage at a moment’s notice.

Alicia

As Coia and Taylor (2007) suggest, “writing into each other’s lives” made sense for exploring our separate but linked inquiries (p. 23). As such, Tiffany and Iopted for engaging in “collaborative autoethnography” (Chang 2013), which is an “umbrella term for autoethnographic research conducted by two or more researchers” (Lapadat 2017:598). Collaborative autoethnography requires a cooperative writing and rewriting process that includes each researcher sharing their narratives with one another, and discussions about these narratives (Taylor and Coia 2009). This type of research allows for describing an experience from at least two different perspectives, while capturing “the essence of the relationship between/among people and how the writers experienced the common experience similarly and differently” (Cann and DeMeulenaere 2012:148). On using collaborative autoethnography in education research, Taylor and Coia (2009) write that this method places “knowledge construction and theorizing in the thick of teaching and reflection, rather than seeing teaching and knowledge about teaching as separate entities” (p. 170). In that vein, this method allowed me to reflect on my relationships with students and the ways that I engage in mentorship, while simultaneously theorizing about professional-personal boundaries in collaboration with the person who has drawn me into thinking more deeply about these issues.

Collaborative autoethnography allowed Tiffany and I to elevate what life course sociologists call “linked lives,” which highlights individuals’ interconnectedness and the interweaving of biographies (Bengston, Elder, and Putney 2012). Bengston et al. (2012) write that “lives are embedded in relationships with people who are influenced by them” (p. 10–11). Navigating my role in Tiffany’s life and cancer experience and the growing embeddedness of our lives, the internal tension I sometimes felt became palpable. In speaking about the process of conducting an interview, Studs Terkel said, “you try to be objective but sometimes you become involved with the narrator” (Griele 1975:2). I often find this to be true in the interview-based research I conduct, but I was having a similar experience with Tiffany: the intensity of the situation that Tiffany was dealing with, her trust in my support, and my investment and sympathy for her was outside of what I typically experienced with students. I often asked myself, as Yow (1997) does about her research subjects, “Do I like them too much?” as I found myself growingly invested in the success, and in this case, survival, of Tiffany. How do I maintain a humanistic outlook in my teaching and research, while simultaneously staying adequately detached and “professional?” Can a passable level of compassion for students, as fellow human beings, be achieved while also re-enforcing a status differential, and a necessary social distance, between students and faculty? Collaborative autoethnography best captured how intertwined our personal and professional lives became, and allowed us to reflect on our experiences while situating them within existing literatures.

Denshire (2014) writes that “an auto-ethnography written within/against a profession may destabilize boundaries between a professional’s work and the rest of their life and break through the dichotomy between selves and others” (p. 832). Destabilizing personal-professional boundaries is critical for humanistic research, mentorship, instruction, and learning. As such, we strived to engage in a research method that allowed for critical self-reflection, co-construction of knowledge, and a collaborative sense of verstehen about the feelings that emerged in our evolving professor-student relationship. Putting our heads together, Tiffany and I were able to use our individual memories of these events to create an “embodied sense of what happened” (Davies and Gannon 2006:3), and provide a richer description of this multilayered experience. By using this method, we were not only able to describe how relational boundaries are blurred, but to argue that this is favorable, and do so through the tenets of our collaborative method in and of itself.

Collaborative autoethnography’s strength is its ability to “study relationships that would more closely reflect how we live them in everyday life” (Ellis 2004:71). In Ellis and Bochner’s (1992) book chapter titled, “Telling and Performing Personal Stories: The Constraints of Choice in Abortion,” they write that they were able to process their shared and individual experiences of abortion via engaging in collaborative autoethnography. Likewise, collaborative autoethnography allows for circumventing some of the ethical dilemmas that emerge—particularly in narrative social science research—when researchers talk about others’ experiences (Ellis 2007). In Butler and Rosenblum’s (1991) collaborative autoethnographic piece that highlights the “living march toward death” (Peek 2013/2014), the authors write about the experience of living with cancer, and being the partner of someone going through it. This method allowed them to both have a voice in showing the multidimensionality of the cancer experience. When Tiffany and I first started writing this, I did not know where Tiffany’s “march” would take her, her family, and me. Fortunately, her illness experience—while slammed with unexpected turning points and unforeseen obstacles—has largely taken a path toward wellness. Her illness experience is best captured on an interactional, relational level with a method that can use narration and plot development to show how our lives were lived during this time.

Even though we share authorship on this piece, it is important to acknowledge our differing positionalities and relationships to the experience itself. Throughout this journey, we both navigated new experiences. When our “story” began, Alicia was a 30-year-old, Black, new faculty member finding herself tangled in the crosshairs of empathy, fear, compassion, and anxiety. Tiffany was an Asian-American, 19-year-old grappling with an immensely heavier but similarly complex constellation of emotions that accompanies an off-timed, life threatening illness. Writing became a therapeutic way for us to each work through our feelings and reflect on this singular and personal yet dual and connected experience. While I am living through this experience as Tiffany’s mentor, teacher, and source of social support, I can only imagine the emotional work and physical labor of fighting this disease that Tiffany was trudging through throughout this process. Acknowledging our emotional positionalities and different roles in this endeavor is important to understand the lens through which this article was crafted.

As soon as I began contemplating my new role as a professor and support to a student with cancer, I jotted notes so that I would remember the events as they unfolded. I did not initially know if we were ever going to write about it, but I wanted to remember how I dealt with specific situations. Simultaneously, I reflected on my thoughts and uncertainties about how to navigate this new experience. As I worked on my portions of this manuscript, I referred to my time-stamped email and text message exchanges with Tiffany as an archive of our remote interactions. While I did not record our phone or in-person conversations, I did take note of things we discussed during and after our chats that seemed most salient. Tiffany routinely joked via email and during our in-person meetings when telling me about her latest treatment, uncomfortable symptoms, or the uncertainties of planning her future in the midst of her illness, “this is all great content for the article.” I frequently responded to her anecdotes and thinking out loud with, “Write that down!” Which sparked her to quickly type notes on her laptop or jot notes in her notepad. More often than not, our exchanges were upbeat and optimistic, which is a testament to Tiffany’s disposition and goal-orientation that carried over into her quest to beat cancer and go on to finish her bachelor’s degree so that she could attend medical school. I am forever grateful to be privy to Tiffany’s thoughts, and to have the opportunity to have a front row seat to be inspired by her story.

Tiffany and I did not explicitly talk about my feelings about our relationship until we decided to write this article together, which is a reflection of the social scripts of the professor-student relationship: when a student comes to my office hours, I routinely listen to them talk about themselves—and the interviewer in me tends to come out and ask a lot of questions—but I do not often talk about myself in the same way as that is not “part of my job” as the socially distanced teacher figure. However, when I began to share with Tiffany that her illness got me thinking about my role as a professor in new ways, our conversations sparked a back-and-forth exchange about personal-professional boundaries that were fruitful in both of our reflections about our relationship. It turned out we both thought about these topics subconsciously, and our conversations helped us both to articulate the discomforts and opportunities that surfaced from breaking down traditional relational boundaries.

Tiffany

Living through my cancer journey while engaging in this joint endeavor with Dr. Smith-Tran, I experienced an intense array of emotions. Having to unpack each emotional event unleashed feelings of vulnerability. For over a year and a half, I chronologically documented each event throughout my cancer journey. I noted everything from factual information about doctor appointments and chemotherapy treatments, to notes on my conversations with Dr. Smith-Tran, to memories of the mixed emotions I felt since the beginning of my personal odyssey. Recalling each event in detail became challenging at times as the complex emotions that arose with revisiting these painful memories, and my feelings sometimes interfered with my ability to remember clearly.

After we independently took notes and had regular conversations for about one year, we began a Google Document to collaborate. We wrote independently but on the same document, initially editing only what we had written ourselves. Dr. Smith-Tran and I regularly met in-person and over video conference to discuss our latest writings, my health, and life overall. I routinely reminded Dr. Smith-Tran of things that occurred that would be important to include, and she helped me choose language and craft a story that best conveyed the emotions I was feeling while staying true to my voice.

As Taylor and Coia write (2009), “co-autoethnographic research could continue indefinitely,” which poses challenges when navigating complex, continually changing social statuses and relationships (p. 180). Undoubtedly, depending on the direction my illness takes, my educational journey, and unexpected turning points in life, our relationship will change. This article reflects a snapshot of a particular segment of time, and during the course of writing this article, that moment proved to be fluid and flow in ways we did not anticipate. Nonetheless, this article is the product of two different perspectives at a particular moment in time that simultaneously and continually shaped each other.

Tiffany

My best friend and I regularly discussed having a “F*CK Cancer Party” throughout my six months of treatment. However, in the midst of treatment, it was hard to imagine getting to this point of celebration. Organizing a party while getting treatment for an unpredictable disease seemed naïve at times. Yet, it was a way to keep my eye on the light at the end of the tunnel.

When I officially reached remission, I began to deliberate who I wanted to invite. I knew it was going to be an intimate gathering considering that I told very few people about my cancer. It felt odd and out of the ordinary to be inviting my professor to a party being planned by a college student, but Dr. Smith-Tran was one of the invitees at the top of my list. I wanted Dr. Smith-Tran to be there with my family and friends to inaugurate me into this next stage of life. Although Dr. Smith-Tran was neither my friend nor family, she is a significant mentor and professor who has given me invaluable guidance throughout her mentorship. As a supportive adviser who has helped me navigate the countless hardships that come with cancer, it only felt right for her to be present at this momentous occasion.

On the day of the party, I stood in the corner of my living room with my close friend, Allan. We began conversing about Dr. Smith-Tran’s pending arrival, and how nervous I was about her attending a party filled with college students. He assured me that Dr. Smith-Tran would have an exceptional time and that we will make her feel welcomed. Besides, this was just a close-knit group of friends celebrating a monumental victory. It was not going to be your typical college party.

Around a half hour later, the doorbell rang. Looking through the transparent glass storm door, I saw Dr. Smith-Tran and her son gleefully waving. Filled with excitement, I charged towards the door, hastily unlocking it. Rushing in for a hug, I welcomed Dr. Smith-Tran and her son into my childhood home, filled with people from my past and present life. I was thrilled to finally introduce her to many of the main characters to my story.

Alicia

Tiffany looked happier than I ever remembered seeing her when she answered the door, wearing a flowy, pale pink dress. Since losing her hair during chemotherapy she wore a wig, but it so resembles her natural straight black hair that those who do not know her would never know it is not real. I met some of her closest friends from high school, her college roommate, and her older sister. Her sister got teary-eyed thanking me for supporting Tiffany, and I could feel my eyes well up too. Fortunately, the happy spirit of the party overtook us and we proceeded to the food. It felt odd being “the professor” among a group of 19 and 20-year old college students as I sometimes feel like I was just this age myself, but they do not act like it is weird having me and my son there. I assume it is because I am a young professor, and it was a family-friendly gathering.

After an hour of small talk and eating homemade Asian food, my increasingly squirmy toddler decided it was time to go. We took a photo with Tiffany in the foyer at the makeshift photo station: a wall adorned with floor-to-ceiling artificial ivy, framed by gold and white balloons, and a cardstock cutout with the words “Au Revoir”: an ironically civilized message to her cancer that I found humorous in contrast to the expletive in the official title of the party. I looked forward to putting this photo in my office one day and looking back at my noteworthy first mentee I had grown to admire so much.

Tiffany

It was unorthodox to have your college professor attend a party at your childhood home. It was even more peculiar because it felt normal. As I reflected on Dr. Smith-Tran’s attendance, my mind summoned a bundle of emotions ranging from excitement, gratitude, and nervousness. I hoped that by inviting her to this gathering, she knew how influential she was to me.

Alicia

I meet with Tiffany in my office on campus every other Friday to discuss the article we are writing together as part of the independent study course she is completing with me on autoethnography. On this particular Friday, I am meeting with Tiffany on FaceTime. I have not left my house in about two weeks. I am wearing a weathered college basketball tee-shirt and shorts that have been on my regular rotation of outfits recently. I text her at 2:55 p.m. to let her know I would be a little late for our meeting. “Sorry I am running late!” I quickly type. I recently instructed Tiffany to text me on my normal cell phone number used by friends, family, telemarketers, my gym, my nail salon, et al.—everyone who calls me Alicia—rather than my Dr. Smith-Tran Google phone number I created. Tiffany still calls me Dr. Smith-Tran, which remains my preference as it is my most concrete demarcation of social distance and the norm at my university, even if I have never been very hung up on the bureaucratic formality of professional titles. Given the chaos that COVID-19 caused in uprooting any sense of normality in our lives, the necessity of using a separate phone number to re-enforce imaginary boundaries seems trivial. The bricks in the wall separating the various professional and personal spheres of my life have been removed at a rapid pace with physical distancing and at-home teaching this pandemic has quickly thrown us into.

My son, Lucas, is building a castle with blocks and singing songs with my husband in the living room. Lucas’ school has been closed for what seems like a decade, and his energy is seeping out of his miniature but seemingly endless toddler pores. I sit on our bed in the adjacent master bedroom—one of the only places that my son will not come looking for me to join the family fun. As an academic, I am used to working at home sometimes, but I am not yet used to this new normal: only a door separates Dr. Smith-Tran and Mama, rather than a car ride from campus to our house. My costume change and performance has to shift faster than ever, and the exhaustion from it all has left me drained to the point that the backstage creeps to the front more often than not. Managing one muddled stage is easier than leaping between two discrete ones.

Tiffany and I end up meeting for 90 minutes. She reminds me of the timeline of her diagnoses, the timing of our phone call exchanges, and updates me on how her classes are going in the midst of the university transitioning to online coursework. We are both dismayed that Tiffany had such difficulty navigating the bureaucracy of the university in order to get accommodations for completing coursework remotely while she was undergoing cancer treatment. More often than not, she was met with “no,” recommendations for another office to contact, and more paperwork to complete. When COVID-19 arrived, the relative ease of making accommodations for completing coursework online became apparent.

Tiffany has to be particularly careful about who she comes into contact with now that COVID-19 is so prevalent. We hoped that her cancer remission party was the end of the cancer chapter of her life, but unfortunately her cancer has since returned—fortunately, in a less advanced form. She was supposed to undergo her last scan to confirm that cancer’s second go-round was in remission, but it was rescheduled due to the overwhelming risk of infection that entering a medical office poses.

We discussed the upcoming fall semester, and the uncertainty surrounding whether or not we would be back on campus. Tiffany had not taken classes in-person since Fall 2018 because of her illness. I felt badly that she has been robbed of the college experience she imagined. Per usual, we close our conversation talking about newly released Netflix shows and food delivery services we frequently used during the shelter in-place. Time flies by just as when we met in-person.

As we chat, I am struck by the sense of closeness I feel with my students in these uncertain times, despite mandated physical distancing. Somehow, obligatory social distancing in the flesh has brought about intimacy of emotions, and blurring of intangible boundaries. Here I was, wearing my hair in a disheveled bun and no makeup, video chatting with my student, who is sitting in her childhood bedroom looking equally casual. Between virtual meetings from home, lecture recordings with a toddler-playing soundtrack, and checking in with students to ensure they are okay at home, the line between personal and professional has become more blurred than ever. The number of students who have checked in on me to see how I am managing having a spouse working in a hospital’s COVID ICU, a toddler at home, and a new way of doing my job, leaves me heartened and in tears more often than I would like to admit. I am hopeful that more widespread, humanistic learning environments will be a silver lining of the pandemic. Illness and the ubiquitous threat of our bodies’ failure makes us all human.