"Can you just do it for me?" "I know you've told me a thousand times where the button is, but I can't find it." "What's this new AI button do?" If you've heard these sentences this term — or said them — this session is for you. I've done both. And I'll tell you the harder one to admit: I'm the person with two master's degrees and a doctorate who still sometimes can't find the button — and it makes me feel stupid.
So, what's going on? What sounds like a tech question is rarely just a tech question. Drawing on my recently completed doctoral research on compassion in higher education, this session gives you language for the invisible emotional labor you've been doing all along. When the same Canvas question gets asked for the tenth time, the conversation isn't really about Canvas. It may be about what my research calls "professional loss" — the disorienting grief of no longer feeling like the expert in your own classroom — and what looks like a help-desk ticket is actually a bid for compassion in disguise.
We'll walk through three findings with direct application to the ID–faculty relationship: the Echo Effect (why the first response to a request matters more than the tenth); the Adaptive Response Continuum (the seven moves — from active listening to translating to holding space — that skilled responders make, often without realizing it); and the reframe that changes everything: "I can help, but not in the way you thought I could help."
This is not a session about being nicer to each other. It's a session about naming work you've been doing in the dark — so you can do it on purpose and ask your institution to meet you there.
