Thank you

My summer I class ended Thursday. On the last day of class when we are supposed to be having a final exam (I assign papers, not tests) we have a discussion about some of the extra credit questions. The extra credit questions are social issues, like smoking in public or stem cell research or access for people with disabilities that they write an opinion on, just a page. I knew they were restless Thursday so I didn't keep them very long, but it is always hard for me to say goodbye to a class. I so want to keep them for myself.

My students are the children I will never have. I don't put a huge burden on them by that, but they have come to mean more to me than anything else in my life. It helps that I seem to have the best students in the world every semester, but that has everything to do with them and nothing to do with me. This semester was no exception and I was fortunate to have learned a great deal from this group. I will miss them.

As one student was leaving he very shyly came up to me and handed me a book. It was a book I knew about, everyone does, but one I had not read. It came out when I was still working in the film business, still cynical enough to dismiss that type of book as hokey and clearly not for a driven workaholic like me. They made a movie of the week of it, but I didn't see it. I don't watch MOVs as a rule. It starred one of my favorite actors, Jack Lemmon, and would turn out to be his last credited role. The book, by the way, is Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom.

I thanked my student, hugged him, and swallowed my tears so that I could go on with the goodbyes and the meeting I had planned with another student after class. After that meeting, where I told a beautiful, intelligent, engaging and deserving student that she is beautiful, intelligent, engaging and deserving of the best life has to offer, I came home and watched a netflix movie. I puttered about, read the last "quizzes" I had given the students in which I had asked them not to sign their names but to tell me what they thought of the class. I really wanted some objective thoughts, but I should have known better. It's human nature to tell people who have power over us what we think they want to hear, so I got a lot of positive comments. Not that they don't mean those comments, but I know there are ways I could improve my classes and my teaching. After finishing the class reviews, I picked up the book.

On the inside cover he had written, "Thank you for making me question myself," and signed his name. He has a great name that I loved to say in class, drawing the syllables of the great name out. I probably embarrassed him as much as I embarrassed a student last spring whose first name was St. John. It isn't surprising that a woman named Liesl in the United States like names. Sitting in the armchair in the living room I started reading, not realizing that the book was about a professor and a former student. I eventually migrated to bed, reading as I always do, before falling asleep. As tired as I was, I just couldn't stop reading. I read 140 pages that night and finished it the next morning. The book concerns what the author called the last class between a dying professor and a former student who had not seen his favorite prof in 16 years. I saw it more as a last confirmation of the relationship the two shared, however distant their time together had been. The words of wisdom were not anything out of the ordinary or particularly profound, but the wisdom the professor imparted was not the thing I responded to in the end. I found myself responding to the relationship the two people shared more than the nature of their discussions. The student was loved and he loved in return.