Hugo Schwyzer

I’m getting ready to leave town again, I’ve got stacks of letters of recommendation to write, and little interest in blogging.

Last week, a publicity person from MTVu contacted me. Apparently, the Music Television people now own Ratemyprofessors, the celebrated — and lamented — website students can use to rate their teachers. I’ve written about RMP before, and did an NPR interview on the subject in 2006. (The last time I wrote about the site, my ratings were immediately hacked. I suspect that will happen again.) In any case, the PR person from MTV wanted me to know that I had been “chosen” as “America’s hottest professor”, and that an annoucement to that effect was coming this week.

The announcement has come today, apparently: two people have already emailed me this link. My dear friend and Pasadena City College colleague Derek Milne joins me on the “top ten” list, apparently, which is nice to see. I note, not insincerely, that my own sense is that our positions ought to be reversed.

I debated whether to blog about this at all. It’s an odd “award” to receive — the best way I can describe it as flattering and humiliating at the same time. I also have some doubt about the integrity of the process — are a handful of devoted fans somehow jacking up the ratings? As I’ve said before about RMP and similar sites, there’s no sure way to tell that those who are doing the rating are actual students. I’m told the site checks IP addresses, but couldn’t a single student (or perhaps my mother?) with access to multiple computers submit multiple entries and hotness points? I don’t know enough to know the answer to that, but it’s another reason to feel a bit, well, flustered.

I certainly don’t think I’m the handsomest or most talented college professor in the United States. At the same time, I know that student perceptions of hotness are often less about aesthetics and more about teaching style — those of us who teach with passion (something I do like to think I do) often inspire passion in return. And as I’ve written before, it’s easy to confuse an excitement about the message with an attraction to the messenger. Perhaps that is more true in subjects like Women’s History and “Introduction to Men and Masculinity” than it is in courses such as Organic Chemistry. Perhaps I “benefit” from being something relatively rare, which is a man who teaches gender studies courses to predominantly female classes. Or maybe it’s my penchant for wearing pink shirts and vegan shoes. Or maybe, it really is all a hoax. I have no idea.

But as tempting as it is to ignore the story completely, to do so would be a bit odd. After all, if I’m really honest, one of the chief reasons I don’t want to bring it up at all is the not-entirely-unreasonable fear that I will be ridiculed. “You, Hugo, the hottest professor? What a joke.” One imagines hearing that sort of thing for weeks on end, and while my ego is much less invested in my appearance today than it was in my twenties, I still would rather not be the object of derision. But without acting as if I saw this “award” as a foregone conclusion and well-deserved, I can also avoid the tiresome pitfall of false modesty for the sake of avoiding humiliation. Part of learning to be a grown-up has been, for me, learning to take the risk of occasionally being ridiculous. That doesn’t mean seeking out opportunities to be laughed at, of course — but it does mean not “hiding away” for fear that even a whiff of self-promotion will cause the sharks to circle. Everything happens for a reason, in the end, and there may yet be some unforeseen opportunity in all this. Or not.

Meanwhile, I have letters of recommendation to write.