potential prof?

I know I gripe from time to time on here about the "bad" students (who are really more often the students-with-a-massive-sense-of-entitlement or students-who-want-to-go-through-life-doing-the-absolute-bare-
minimum). But I also have to celebrate the good ones.

I'm working with a research student right now on a project. We've decided to expand the project into the fall - because of some interesting results and because we couldn't optimally design the original experiment.

We did the last bits of the summer research today and he talked to me a little about his plans.

He's been in one of my classes - earned an A. In fact, he was one of those above-and-beyond people: on essay questions on the exam, instead of merely parroting the book or lecture examples, he suggested examples that were just as appropriate but DIFFERENT - ones that came from his other classes or his reading. (Anyone who can synthesize rather than compartmentalize their knowledge is going to go far.)

He is also the kind of person who always has a book in his hand - not that there's necessarily anything so superior about avid readers, but what that says to me is that he's someone who likes to make use of "down" time, like time spent waiting or the slack time between classes.

(He's also - I guess it might help to give a mental picture - a BIG guy. I mean both tall and large. Think of Hagrid with a better haircut and a U.S. accent and you've pretty much got him.)

Anyway, today he was talking about his future plans - his wife wants to be a teacher of disabled kids (I suggested a place she could maybe do an internship; he wasn't familiar with them but said he'd suggest she look into it). He said, "Eventually I want to get a Ph.D. and teach college biology."

And you know? I think he could do it. I think he'd be good at it. He's got the patience and the curiosity and the tolerance for slowly crunching through data.

"Yeah," I responded sort of quietly, "It's a good life."

"Yeah, it seems like it would be." was his response. (And he added that he really liked doing research. I'm glad I had a project he could work on, and I'm glad it's turning out to be something worthwhile. I hope in another year or so I'm writing grad-school recommendations for this guy.)

I encouraged him to looking into becoming a UTA (and I could definitely use him in Ecology as a TA), and I gave him a few other quick pointers towards continuing on the "right path."

So, even though there are some people here who think they should get an A solely because they managed to drag themselves to class 75% of the time out of the year, even though there are people who skip doing multiple homeworks and then ask me "What are YOU going to do about this?" as regards their D, there are also people that I look at and go, "Yeah, you are the next generation. When it comes time for me to retire, I will be able to."