So at the ass-end of burning, smoking, twisted train wrecks of final papers, mysteriously-ill-on-the-final-exam-day students, and the cancellation of my summer class three days before it was due to start (though let's face it, rushing through material that compresses four and a half months of study into one month was bound to be a shitstorm, so fuck it) I did have a handful of bright spots, in the form of kind emails from students. But Miss N. Thrope, perhaps you are saying, you are mean! And curmudgeonly! And you hate 80% of your students, or rather 80% of their wretched, beyond vexing behaviors. True, true.
Yet, on occasion, I get the kind of email that warms the cockles of my black little heart. (And they were sent after final grades were in, which rules out total and shameless grade grubbing). An overseas student with severely inadequate English language skills thanked me for all my help this semester and said she felt her writing skills had greatly improved (this was after the poor girl barely scraped through with a passing grade; she literally had to re-write all of her papers at least four times, but dammit, she did it); an adult learner said our class kept them coming to school and convinced them not to drop out again; another student said they normally hate the subject I teach, but this semester they actually kind of liked it and felt that they really learned something.
Now, does this mitigate the days when I feel like Maybelle, ready to burn this teaching mother down? Does this alleviate the tenuous, will-I-have-a-job-next-semester, free floating anxiety of adjunctdom? Of course not. But I'm not too proud to say it does, at least a little, make the poison go down a bit sweeter.
Q: How about y'all? Any pleasant surprises from your snowflakes at the end of this semester?
