The joy of students

Students can be such a pain sometimes, you tend to forget how splendid they are, even the ones whose minds your subject escapes.

Early this semester I winced when Disability Resources sent a notice saying a student with Asperger’s Syndrome had signed up for one of my classes. Ungraciously, selfishly I thought, “Argh! More work, less pay!”

We must stop with the ungraciousness and the selfishness.

This extraordinary young man, who does indeed face some daunting challenges, has made himself one of my all-time favorite students. Polite, sweet-natured, attentive, and observant, he is an altogether brillliant young person. He turns in meticulously edited, meticulously organized, yea verily meticulously perfect papers. No, they’re not plagiarized (trust me: I checked). The things are works of art. His final paper almost reaches the professional level in quality; he’s certainly writing on the graduate school level. He wants to be a physicist, or maybe an astronomer. The kid’s a natural: let’s hope he makes it.

Then there’s Joe the Plumber. Yeah: a real plumber. A big, bluff red-necked bruiser in his late 30s or early 40s, this guy realized there had to be a better way to make a living than fixing pipes, so he’s come back to school for a degree or two in business. English will never be his strong suit, but by steady persistence (and a bodacious sense of humor) he’s nailed an A in the class. As yesterday’s final session was wrapping up, he wanted to be sure every item in the online grade sheet was filled in correctly, because, he said, “My mother is not gunna believe this!”

“Why?” I asked.

“I  never got an A in high school.”

🙂 “Well. Tell her you’re a late bloomer.”

And we have Sally Bowles, a pole dancer. Her mother thinks she’s a cocktail waitress in a chain restaurant and highly disapproves of that. Little does she know the girl supports her three-year-old by taking off her clothes in men’s clubs.

You can make a lot of money taking off your clothes in men’s clubs, even without having to perform any extracurricular services. She earns more in a single evening than I do teaching her English course over two weeks. Women we think of as “hard” are surprisingly fragile, though. Her toughness is a façade hiding a dangerous vulnerability.

Men can be vulnerable, too. The ex-Marine planning to re-up in the Army after he finishes at the junior college carries his fierceness as a Roman soldier carried his shield, something to bounce off the arrows, swords, and lances of disappointment and careless humanity.

They’re all like that, one way or another: dodging the slings and arrows. Gotta lov’em!