I finally figured out why I'm not as comfortable with that linguistics teacher of mine, the Dutch one, as I'd expected to be. Considering she's a highly respected veteran staff member with her own psycholinguistics lab and all, the answer might surprise you. She never looks anyone in the eye! When she stands in front of the class, she looks around, but never at us, just through us. Even when she was giving examples and explanations of Dutch phenomena, when I was sitting in the front row smiling and nodding, she never even looked at me. It's disconcerting, really! I never realized I was sensitive for that sort of thing, but it bothers me. After class today, I mentioned it to Erin, a classmate, "Have you noticed that she never looks anyone directly in the eye?" I thought maybe I was the only one who had noticed, but Erin immediately said, "Yes! I work at Java City, and she came by this morning to order pastries for a meeting, and even then, she didn't really look at me!"

I always thought eye contact was one of those things you simply had to have to be a good teacher. I mean, you're sharing your knowledge with other people, explaining complicated things, answering questions - don't you HAVE to look them in the eye, in order to see the degree of confusion, the subtleties to a question, the moment when understanding is reached? They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I don't know about that, but I know they act almost like a second mouth, or second pair of ears - eye contact is just essential in talking, isn't it? Didn't your parents always tell you when you were little, "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" How can an esteemed professor of 40 or 50 years not be able to do it?