“Interacting with professors–it makes life more curious.”
Manayeh Linton, a junior business administration major, leaned forward in his chair as he described his experience working out with Union professors in the Wellness Center. It was clear he had thought seriously about this point.
“They’ve had different experiences and they’ve lived through different things, and it’s good to be able to speak about those and learn about those from them,” Linton said.
Frequently, our sphere of contact with professors seems limited to the classroom itself, a purely academic thing. We go to classes, answer when called on, and then never have a real conversation with the professor. According to Linton, a lot of us are missing out on crafting a genuine, meaningful relationship with those professors–as well as good workouts with new people.
Linton began working out with some of his professors when he started running into them at the gym. Seeing them there made him curious to hang out and get to know them better, even getting to be friends.
“Whenever you see someone outside of the classroom, and you haven’t done anything other than be in that classroom, you don’t necessarily know how to interact with them to how that level of relationship is supposed to be like,” Linton said. “But since we’ve gone to the gym together and had coffee together, it feels like we have a more natural friendship.”
Linton has been struck by how open professors at Union are about getting to know their students outside of the classroom, something that David Thomas, University Professor of History, has also come to learn in his time at Union.
“I had taught at Ohio Sate University for two years,” Thomas said. “And during that time, I had never gotten to know my students’ names. And then I get here, and students greet me in the hallway.”
Thomas had a bit of a learning curve when he first came to Union, but now he also greets students by name and frequently helps spot them when he catches them during a set at the gym. He believes those gym relationships are beneficial, carrying over into the classroom and helping the students succeed.
“Teaching is a relational thing,” Thomas said. “A lot of people think that it’s all about content, and what you have to be studying, but it’s really relational. So, if students are motivated by that relationship, they engage in the material and are much more likely to succeed in the class.”
We may be individuals, he argued, but ultimately, we are made to flourish when we have those closer connections, both with peers and with mentors. Linton agreed, saying he had come to trust his professors more after intentionally working out with them.
“It makes it feel more comfortable to talk to them about certain things that you wouldn’t typically talk to a professor about,” Linton said. “It’s interesting to have that older figure relationship, especially when that’s a professor.”
One professor in particular Linton has spent that time with is Steve Halla, Associate Professor of Art. Linton began his friendship with Halla when he saw Halla’s bench. Since then, he has found Halla to be fascinating and has enjoyed seeing the different workout styles the two of them have.
Halla, who has been working out since early college, is dedicated to interacting with his students he sees at the gym because it helps him find those long-term connections.
“Because I teach ART210, I typically have students just that one semester, and then they move on,” Halla said. “And so building any longer relationships with students becomes very difficult. Going to the gym allows me to actually interact with students and build those relationships that someone might have if they were teaching students in their major for three or four years.”
This, he says, is one of the main reasons that he continues to go to Union’s gym as opposed to one of Jackson’s many other gyms in town. This is a time he values. Not only does he see this as a chance to meet and have fellowship with these students, but Halla also sees it as a way to live out his faith.
“This is a place where Christ-centeredness comes into play,” Halla said. “On the one hand, when I’m standing in the classroom, it’s very, ‘I’m the professor, you are the student,’ while at the same time, I am your brother in Christ, and you are my sister and brother in Christ, and we share a much deeper bond than a classroom could ever give you. And for me, at least, being in the gym breaks down that hierarchical feeling you have in the classroom and now I’m just hanging out with people, and we’re living life.”
