This semester marks the end of my official re-entry back into life as a professor. This is basically a perfect summary of what it was like.

But as I head into the holiday season, here are my personal 2013 professor lessons learned:

a) You can get people jazzed about learning when you actually give a shit about what you’re teaching. And these two things are absolutely intertwined.

b) My students listened to me (at least) some of the time – while they weren’t effing around on Facebook or online shopping (seriously, they didn’t even try to hide it from me when they knew I was standing at the back of the room and had a perfect line on their laptops….wtf?!). Most of the time I didn’t hear crickets when I asked questions. Probs cuz their participation was heavily weighted.

And they heard me – as the quotes below show. Now….the fact that they listened to me is both kinda crazy (I’m considered the ‘authority’ simply cuz I stand behind a podium) and horrifying (how I present at topic can legit effect what these students really think about some of this stuff).

Seriously? Who gave me this kind of power?

c) Challenging people to confront their values about sex, relationships, love, and life is a really f’ing sweet teaching gig. Let’s do it all over again in January, shall we?

Here are some of the more poignant responses from my students from my third year Interpersonal Relationships psychology course…

Question: How has this course made you think differently about interpersonal relationships?

(PS – this was the BEST question ever. What a great way to gauge what they actually “heard” in class, you know…in between the tweeting, texting, creeping, and other non-class related activities they were busy doing)

Personally, this course was a slap of reality to my life.

It makes me realize how crazy I am.

Casual sex is good and now is a good time for it because you will never be surrounded by so many people outside of university.

I now know that if I like someone and they are already with someone else, I have an 50% chance that I can successfully poach that person from their partner.

Love may not be all we think it is (totally understand this now).

Casual sex is okay!

I’m more cynical about relationships.

I have begun to understand that love is real, in that is has an evolutionary basis. Prior to this course, I had seen it as a bullshit hallmark invention. Demonstrating that love shows commitment which fosters relationships make it more relevant in my view.

Those GGG tips didn’t hurt either   (FYI – GGG: Being good, giving, and game in the bedroom)

I hold more value to the evolutionary forces that drive us, such as who we find attractive for gene continuation and why certain things cause/cue arousal (pupil dilation)

I have a different perspective on love (in a good way!) and where our attraction and mating strategies originally came from…by looking at it in an evolutionary perspective.

According to the passionate love/companionate love theory, I feel like after the first 2yrs +/- 6 months a relationship sucks (lol) but the triangle theory of love keeps me hopeful.

And for the pièce de résistance…

Casual sex: I definitely mostly look at casual sex differently! I used to definitely think it was a bad thing because of the risk of STIs, it doesn’t serve a long-term purpose, and how media shows it as a bad thing for women. Now I consider – based on the professor’s research – the possible benefits and lack of disadvantages of casual sex because of the different types.

Bam.