Is my professor into me?

[mirja]

No, I don't want advice on whether or not I should pursue this man. I already know the answer is no, and I don't intend to. What I really want is to just talk about it, and I'm wondering if said professor is into me too.

 

The story: I am graduating at the end of this semester. I have had this particular science professor every semester, and I also worked on a project with him over the summer. He is significantly older than me, divorced, and currently single. He is probably the best professor I ever had, and is generally the kind of professor who jokes around in class to keep students' attention. He is also pretty open about his life with his students.

 

I didn't always have a crush on him, but he always was my favorite, and I strove to be the best in his classes (and generally succeeded in doing so). In the first class I took with him, I was the only student exempt from the final exam, and he made a big show of it. A few semesters later, I wrote a paper that he told me was the best he ever read, and he told that to the entire class. I suspect he told other faculty members and perhaps students outside of the class about it, too, because it seemed like everybody knew about that paper. He asked me to work on a project this past summer with him and two other students, and we ended up trading phone numbers.

 

Now let's talk about the juicy stuff. The project we worked on involved fish, and we wore waders all the time. I was the only girl on the project, and the first day I wore them, he told me that there was nothing more intriguing than a woman in waders. I wasn't sure if that meant anything (and I still don't), but it was the first of many comments that made me wonder if he had any sort of feelings or attraction to me. Moving to this past semester, we exchanged a number of text messages containing nerdy science jokes and pictures (because I absolutely adore nerdy science jokes). He also started talking to me more like a friend than a student (asking me questions about my personal life, like work and family and stuff like that, and talking about different things).

 

Now in his classes, he generally makes us do several presentations and has the class grade everyone else. Sometimes he tells us who the class ranked as the top 3. Well on one of these assignments in which I was voted the best, he brought me a giant trophy (it was one of his kid's old trophies with a piece of tape over the name plate and my name written there). He also occasionally tried to scare me (and succeeded) by doing things like popping open doors that I was about to walk through. I also went to a environmentally-themed dinner with him and several students, and we were supposed to dress up. Now, I am a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, so when I showed up wearing a nice dress, he very obviously looked me up and down and said "wow." He then proceeded to ask me to fix his tie.

 

This semester, I found him calling on me (and only me) to answer questions if no one in the class would volunteer. For our first presentation, he was standing behind me getting something from behind the screen, and he whispered into my ear, "are you going for the trophy?" Of course, I told him yes, and he smiled in a very particular way that I really can't describe. Our class recently went to a conference, and there was a social mixer where we met with several professionals. He told us not to dress like slobs, so I wore a skirt and a nice top, while almost everyone else wore jeans. He came right up to me and commented on how I was the only person in a skirt. I then pointed out that I was wearing sneakers with my skirt, and he said that no one would notice because they would be too busy looking at the rest of me. I also said that I didn't often have opportunities to wear skirts, and he told me to make more opportunities.

 

He also spent a lot of time standing next to me that night, and at one point he had his arm pressed up against mine for a while while talking to the group. There was a raffle later in the night, and afterwards, he told me he had something for me and gave me a handful of losing tickets. I tried to shove them into his coat pocket, but he was too quick for me, and then he told me to shove them into the butt pocket of a student that was standing nearby. On the drive back from the conference, he talked to me a lot, and did a few bird impersonations for me. We also talked briefly about taxidermy and how it is possible to stuff a hummingbird, and I mentioned that I would like to learn how to do it. So the very next class, he handed out lab materials to us on how to prepare museum specimens and we stuffed some mice. He told the class it was "by popular demand," but really it was all me. I actually had a difficult time doing it and really botched up the first mouse. He tried to help me salvage it, and while doing so, said "Gee, now whose idea was this?" and then proceeded to ruin the mouse some more.

 

I also taped origami birds to his office door over the course of a few days earlier in the semester without him knowing who is was. Then one day he happened to be in his office at an unusual time and I came walking around the corned with a handful of paper birds and was caught. He left them up and just the other day told me how much he liked his birds.

 

So I really do have a serious crush on the man. He's smart, funny, and kind of goofy, and I often wish there was a smaller age gap. It kills me that I'm going to be graduating and never have a class with him again, but I think I might feel better if I knew that he reciprocated the feelings. I suppose it would probably just make me feel worse, actually, but I really wish I could tell if he was at all into me or if it's just in my head. I'm terrbile at reading guys.

[RachR]

Question: why's the answer "no" to pursue him? Once you have graduated and he's no longer your teacher, he is no longer off limits.

[mirja]

Well, for one thing, I'm pretty sure it would still look bad if we were to get together after graduation. Granted, most everyone knows I don't need to sleep with my professors to get decent grades, but some people still might think it and I'd hate for his students to think that of him.

 

Second, there is a pretty large age gap, and while generally speaking age doesn't mean much to me, it's a big enough gap that I think it would make a relationship problematic. The age gap could potentially cause some issues with his kids, too. I know that some kids get weirded out when their parents date someone who is not too much older than they are.

 

I guess other than those two reasons, there aren't any other good reasons not to.