Music to my ears

My summer classes ended today.

On the way out of gen bio, one of the guys stopped and said to me "Thank you. Thank you for giving us every opportunity to do our best in this class."

He gets it. It makes me happy to hear someone who feels that way. (I don't THINK he's quite earning an A...but he's definitely going to pass.)

We need more students with his attitude: that it's in large part THEIR work that leads to their success. I do my best, but there's only so much I can do in a class.

Also, to me, it sounded like he was also saying, "You're fair, and I appreciate that." I may be tough but I do work hard to be fair. ("Fair" in the old sense of giving everyone an equal chance to succeed, not "fair" in the new sense of listening to every trembly-lip story and patting the person on the head and saying "That's OK. I will pass you anyway because Your Life Is Hard.")

I will say I'm glad to be done. This has been a tough, tough summer for me, in part because of doing a couple of extra "overload" things that took a lot of time, but for which I saw no actual compensation.