With my first group of seniors safely on stage, I am now faced with the most difficult decision of my teaching career thus far:

Am I a friend of former students????

For the last two weeks, friend requests have been flooding my Facebook profile, all of them from young adults who are now my former students. The first dozen or so were rejected without much thought. They were the same ones who had tried to befriend me when I was still their teacher, and they were just as quick at the draw once they graduated. It was too soon, and to me they were still students.

Then it happened: Last night I approved my first former student.

I don’t know if it’s because time passes, as it always seems to pass when we’re not paying attention. Maybe I’m starting to let them go. Subconsciously, they are slipping into adulthood and I no longer see them as little children. Whatever the reason, at the time I felt fine, but today I’m not sure what to think.

All I know is that I have a bad feeling.

Nothing happened immediately. Satan did not appear on my computer screen, laughing from the belly. The FBI didn’t start knocking on my door. All was quiet on the Facebook front and I continued with my life online.

Of course, now I am second-guessing myself and wondering what the meaning of that fated click will be. How will my web world change now that I have students peering into its inner workings? For a long time I have tried to be a mentor to so many kids (hundreds right now, soon to be thousands). During the work day I try to appear responsible, professional and, well, a proper urban role model. Sure, sometimes I wear Airforce 1 and other times I wear my hats with the brim straight and tilted to the left, but still, I try to emulate the look of a successful adult who was born in the ghetto.

One of the things I appreciate most in my professional life is, well, my private life. I like having my degenerate friends to turn to when I need to loosen up. I like posting profanity filled updates when referees screw up every call at the world cup. I like to chat a bit with my friends when they send a cheesy love post to their significant other, forcing us all to read it in our news feed. I just like not having to be a role model sometimes. I may be thirty, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to get a little cantankerous.

But with this recent late-night champagne-induced decision (it was my wife and I’s second anniversary), what I’ve done is connect my professional life with my private life, something I thought I’d never do.

Of course, Facebook has been slowly taking my privacy away for months. Last year I started adding my mom and her friends. I don’t remember what I had been drinking when I made that decision, but it must have been something stronger than champagne. Since then, my online persona has had to be a subdued, watered-down, simmering shadow of what it used to be, because every once in a while my mom posts something like, “Make sure you stop at the stop sign after you pick up your shoes.” , there are many children in the neighborhood”.

Like most people, I find that the more people I add, the less private my life on Facebook becomes. Little by little it has become a different refuge than it used to be. It was once a private community where my friends and I could talk trash and post YouTube videos of John Lajoie. It is now a place where my mother can contact me at will, and I have 18-year-old protégés who still look to me for guidance and inspiration.

Well, I guess I’ll have to go through all my photos (again) and get rid of anything incriminating. In the end, I’ll probably end up adding all those graduates because, truth be told, I’d love to keep in touch and Facebook might be the only way. Sure, there’s the “Defriend” option, but I only use it for people who just won’t stop posting their every thought and action ten times a day (you know who you are). I will have to be professional and inspiring, even in my private life.

And I can only hope that someone is creating a site on the Internet where I can network, send messages and stay in touch with my closest friends. Wouldn’t that be a great idea?