I’ve told the students to call me Bob but they don’t. It’s Professor or Dr. Wiseman or Sir, that they default to. It’s the culture here. When I started teaching ten years ago at the community college they were the opposite. They all wanted to swear every second and they referred to me as Bob, even before we met. I guessed their need to swear in front of the “teacher” stemmed from being out of high school and testing this situation. I made my own test too. I tried not to swear even though I ordinarily swear a lot. I liked the altered state of it and certain students did too. There’s another test I try to maintain which is not using any of my music. No examples of songs I wrote, no playing to the crowd. Sometimes people ask for it but I think it’s an unwise move in terms of power. Seems like a conflict of interest to use your own work as an example because if you’re the teacher then you have the power and if you say my song is a good example, I don’t think it allows students the freedom to say your song stinks if that’s what they concluded – because they need you to mark them. My last year in high school was spent at an alternative place where we called the teachers by their actual names. It was awesome to drop the stiff system we were raised in. I never met a musician among any of my teachers in high school or at least none that could play better than open chords on acoustic guitar. Maybe they had the same instincts and were just hiding their work from me out of a sincere interest to fuck with the power structure, that’s probably what it was.