Issue 4: Page 2

It’s Valentine’s Day. Those of us who are in a relationship are waiting for the chocolates and the flowers and the cards from our significant other. Those of us who are single treat the holiday as a ridiculous tradition. And then there are a few of us who can’t stop thinking about Teacher X.

Let’s admit it: we’ve all had a Teacher X before. Teacher X is that one teacher whose class we cannot wait for everyday. It’s that teacher whose classroom we try to pass as many times as possible, even if that detour makes us late to class. When Teacher X praises us or gives us A’s on a test, we get so excited because we’ve impressed him or her.

Having a crush on Teacher X is so embarrassing.

But since it’s Valentine’s Day, let’s continue this discussion of shameful teacher crushes. One may wonder why students of every generation crush on their teachers. If there’s anyone who’s obviously off the market, it’s a teacher. Teachers, you see, are adults who are generally at least ten years older than we are. They are adults who are married. They are adults who are married who may also have kids. They are adults who are married with kids and who have lives outside of a classroom of giggling teens.

That is the cold, hard truth. Why, then, do we continue to have butterflies in our stomach when Teacher X walks in the room?

Well, let’s observe. What kind of teacher is Teacher X? We generally tend not to dream about Teacher Y, who clearly does not know how to teach, and snaps at us when we’re a little bit more rowdy that we should be. No, we students prefer Teacher X, who is clearly passionate about his or her work, who respects us as people and not as intellectual inferiors and who makes us feel at ease in the classroom.

Oddly enough, according to an article by MSNBC, many teachers and (former) students have found that the aesthetic appearance of the teacher usually plays a very small role, if any role at all, in determining if a teacher is “crushable” or not.

That same article also stated that kids who crush on their teachers usually are only looking for a role model and that teacher crushes help kids grow more independent from their parents. Assuming that the crush is an innocent one, might we add.

Experts say that as long as the crush is appropriate, parents should leave a “love-struck” student alone. But we at the Matrix have to disagree. As much as we’d hate to ruin a Valentine’s Day, we at the Matrix feel that it is beneficial to our classmates to crush their hopes and dreams: Teacher X, who is old and married with kids and has a life outside a classroom, has a .000001 percent chance of ever marrying you.

There is a 99.999 percent chance, however, that your friends are laughing (good-naturedly, since they’ve all had teacher crushes before as well) at you and that Teacher X might be a little annoyed by all your obviously pointless (but planned in advance) visits to his or her class.

“Geesh!” you might be thinking. “How could Matrix write something as horrible and cruel on the day of love?”

We ask that you think about it this way: now that you know that your pursuit of Teacher X will never come to fruition, you can stop wasting your time and start searching for a real significant other. Stop hanging around Teacher X’s room for tutoring sessions that you don’t need and get tutored by that cute kid in math class instead! Prom, after all, is just around the corner. Now, aren’t you glad that Matrix crushed your “dreams” on Valentine’s Day?