What Is Communism?

The following dialogue took place in both sections of my literature course.

Me: This philosopher says that the masses are stupid. In his opinion, the masses are incapable of governing themselves, which is why every society needs a strong governing minority that will direct and guide the stupid masses. How would you characterize the political stance of this philosopher?

Students (in unison): He is a Communist!

Me (baffled): No, actually such views belong on the opposite end of the political spectrum. If we have Communism on the far left, then which political system belongs on the far right?

Students (in unison): Socialism!

Those pesky Communists and Socialists seem to have colonized the entire political spectrum in my students' opinion.

End of Semester Correspondence

I wonder why some students choose the end of the academic year to get on a prof's nerves in the most inventive ways imaginable. It has to be pretty obvious that a professor will be extremely thankful to anybody who doesn't waste her time in any way and might even cut such considerate students some slack. Apparently, most students don't see it this way because I keep receiving emails from students that would try the patience of an early Christian saint. Here are some examples of what I've been dealing with in the past two weeks.

A) Dear Professor Clarissa, You said that today is the cut off day for the lab and I know that the lab is worth 25% of the final grade. I haven't done any lab since the beginning of the semester and I'm getting kind of worried. Should I worry about it or is it OK?

B) Dear Professor, I'm writing to tell you that you are the bestest, most amazing prof ever. I absolutely LOVED your class this semester. Your lectures are always so interesting and fun!!! I know I missed 11 classes this semester (out of 24) but I know that if I'd been there I would have loved them. So I hope that you don't hold my absences against me.

C) Hi. I'm wondering what my grade is at this point. Please send me what my grade is before the final exam. I need to know how much to prepare for the final exam. Thanks.

D) Dear Clarissa, I know you talked about the final exam in class today but I wasn't listening. Could you tell me what it is you said?

E) Hi prof, I know I missed the oral exam today and I'm sorry. Is there any way I could do a makeup exam and submit it to you by email?

F) Dear professor, I know that I spoke a lot of English during the oral exam today and that resulted in a very low grade. I just wanted to explain to you why that happened. I really love Spanish and want to learn it but speaking English is so much easier! So that's why I spoke it during the exam.

G) Hey Clarissa, thank you for giving us this great study guide for the exam in our literature course. I find it very helpful. The only problem is that I can't find the answer key. Did you forget to hand it out or did I misplace it?

I've been trying to figure out which one is my favorite but it's too hard to choose one. Which one do you like the most?

How to Talk to Students Without Getting in Trouble, Part II

Another important rule of interacting with students is that, no matter how close your relationship with a student is, it is never a good idea to comment on the student's weight or physical attributes. I had this male professor who kept bugging his female students with questions like, "How much do you weigh? Have you been gaining weight? Are you sure you don't eat too much?" I am blessed with having a very healthy attitude towards my body, so whenever this professor greeted me with "You are getting really fat, Clarissa. Why are you so fat?", I had no problem responding in a jocular tone, "Well, I never be as fat as you, professor" or "You know how much I admire you, so I'm trying to emulate you and get as fat as you are." However, students who had body image issues or even had a history of eating disorders suffered greatly. 

It's a good idea to avoid touching students when it isn't absolutely necessary. There was this professor who really liked my hair. I like my hair, too, and I understand how one might feel the compulsion to touch it. However, it would get really annoying to be sitting at the library or working in the stacks and feel somebody grab my hair and tug it. I'm especially sensitive to people touching my head, so it was extremely annoying. I couldn't do the same thing to the professor to teach him a lesson because he had no hair I could tug.

Self-deprecation is a tool that many professors use to show students that they are human and to make the students like them. I, however, believe that self-deprecation is counter-productive in the classroom. Not only all of my colleagues, administrators, staff members and janitors are completely 100% fantastic, but so am I. If there is something that I don't know or forgot to do, I just say so without engaging in a self-deprecating rant that would only make everybody feel uncomfortable. Students are not my therapy group and it is not their job to make me feel better about myself. 

It is often hard to keep one's cool, especially at the end of the semester when work accumulates and tempers get frayed. I saw a very soft-spoken and polite colleague last week yell at a student in a way that made even me feel scared. I'm sure that the student really messed up to make the professor this angry. I also think that yelling is a completely normal and healthy way of venting one's frustrations. However, I believe that it is only permissible to yell at people who have no problem yelling back at you. When you have a person who is powerless in their relationship with you, raising your voice is just abusive. When I feel that I'm about to explode, I just leave and take a walk around the building while trying to breathe very deep. This usually helps to contain the anger. Blogging about it is another great venue of releasing pent up anger.

You can find the first part of this post here.

And on My Birthday, Too!

There is this student who is actually quite bright who keeps taking my classes and then disappearing after the first couple of weeks. We have quite a long window of opportunity for students to drop courses with no penalties attached. This semester they had until March 21 to do so, for example. The student in question fails to avail herself of this opportunity. She then emails me either after the end of the semester or, like in this case, two weeks before to ask what she can do to pass the course. Which annoys me greatly because the suggestion that my courses can be passed through handing in a few written assignments by a student who has never been in class is quite offensive.

It's annoying to see otherwise intelligent, promising students self-sabotage in this way. It is equally annoying to have to explain to the same student over and over again that this is not the way to get an education. The most frustrating thing, though, is to see people who, for all means and purposes, are adults act in such an immature way.

Pregnant Student versus a Hungover One

Reader J. kindly sent me a link to a blog post of a woman who is going to college while pregnant. This blogger / student felt sick and had to leave class early. The professor took off participation points. Now the student is planning to complain:

 I have to keep going to class until I’m really in labor, and school is pretty far away.  My Tuesday class is a reasonable half hour away, but my Wednesday class is 90 minutes away in traffic.  If I started hard, active labor at school, I have no idea what I would do.  Also – get this – I left class early last Tuesday because I was so sick I couldn’t see straight, and my professor actually had the balls to dock me 20 out of 25 possible Participation points just because I had to leave.  Clearly she’ll be docking me ALL 25 Participation points for each class I miss while I’m doing a silly little thing like trying to have a baby, so I cannot take off a single extra day other than what is absolutely necessary.  (And yes, I am SOOO writing a letter about that.)

Now before I proceed to comment on this post, I need to explain that I'm the most laid-back professor in the world. If the students tell me they need to miss a quiz or an exam or that they can't hand in the paper on time, I never even ask them why this happens. I just reschedule. Every single time. My students see that I do everything I can to accommodate their needs, so they never abuse my niceness.  There was a single instance in my entire teaching career when I didn't accept a student's final essay that was handed in late. The reason why I made an exception for that student is that he handed in the essay a week after the date when I had to enter the final grades into the system. Other than that, I have not been known to make students' lives difficult.

Participation grades, however, are a different matter. In order to get your participation points, you need to . . . well, participate. In discussions. In class. I once failed a student who handed in perfect written assignments but missed 80% of classes in my Advanced Spanish Conversation course. As hard as I tried to explain it to him, he refused to realize that a course on conversation implies engaging in conversations and participation involves participating. As understanding as one might be of the students' personal circumstances, one cannot give participation points to somebody who was absent. Participation in absentia is not possible. It defies all logic to give participation points to someone who is not in the room.

The reason why I never ask students for the reasons why they need to miss class or hand in assignments late is that I have no interest in working out a hierarchy of special needs or problems. In the discussion thread that follows the post I quoted (if you manage to wade through the childish vocabulary and infantile oohs and aahs), several commenters refer to this woman's situation as being "special" because she is pregnant and, as a result, different from the situations of those students who can't come to class because they are hungover from their last night's party.

There is no doubt in my mind that her pregnancy is very special to this woman. It must also be very special to her relatives and friends. For strangers, however, of which her professor is one, it is neither more nor less special than another student's hangover. Both the pregnancy and the hangover are the results of the choices these students made as adults. In my capacity as an educator, I don't think it's my place to judge whose choices are more legitimate and deserve of greater consideration. All I need to know is that the student wasn't there and, as a result, didn't manage to participate. 

We all would like the world to stop and pay special attention to our all-important issues. And, of course, everybody is intimately convinced that everything to do with them is especially important. However, adulthood consists of realizing that we are not the center of the universe and the world at large couldn't care less about our pregnancies, hangovers, illnesses, absences, or grades. 

You Know Who Annoys Me?

Students who tell their professor that they really really need to meet with her before 10 am on a Monday morning, which forces said professor to drag her sickly self to campus (instead of staying in bed and nursing her sick ear) at an ungodly hour of the morning of a day when she is not even supposed to be at work, and then fail to show up. 

Is there anything less intelligent than antagonizing your professor in this way at the very end of the semester?

Talks With My Students Series

"Why are you learning so many languages?" I ask a student.

"Because learning a new language helps me grow as a person, understand the world and myself a lot better," he responds in perfect Spanish.

Teaching is really worth all the effort one puts into it if you get a student like this one at least every once in a while.

A Difference Between Freshmen and Juniors / Seniors

I graded 37 essays this week. Their quality varied from abysmal to fantastic. Still, there was one important characteristic these essays shared: they were all original. Not a single student tried to plagiarize. It is obvious that they did what I asked and abstained from opening their Internet browser the entire time they were writing their essays. The difference between these juniors and seniors on the one hand and the kind of students we get in our freshman classes on the other couldn't be more glaring. Sometimes, as many as 60% of first-year students hand in plagiarized work.

I have written before about the extremely low graduation rates at my university. We enroll a huge percentage of students who shouldn't be in college at all and then both professors and students themselves suffer through  their freshman year. These are the kids who don't know the names of continents, don't know which countries border the United States, and don't even consider the possibility that a written assignment can be written rather than copied from the Internet. These students literally have zero cultural capital, which is something that cannot be remedied during the first semester in college. (Here you can find a great post that explains what is meant by the term "cultural capital.") Before their first year in college is over, they drop out and we are left with students who can and will benefit from a university education.

We offer freshman seminars to our students. These seminars are supposed to prepare them to be in college. Next semester (in the Fall) I will be teaching such a course for the first time. I hope that I will be able to salvage a few of the students from dropping out. Many, however, cannot be helped even by the best course in the universe. The cultural capital is simply not there. Those who believe that "Africa is a country in Latin America" cannot be salvaged.

Why Is It Always a Grandmother?

I have no idea why students keep sending me emails explaining why they can't come to class. I don't really care what the reason is. An absence is an absence. I never refuse to accept any written assignment that is being handed in late, though. My position is: make up your mind, show up, don't show up, live with the consequences, it's all up to you. We are not in high school, and I have no need to know why any particular student couldn't drag himself to class. I keep explaining to students that the best thing they can do to get me into a good, positive, friendly mood is avoid wasting my time. I'm always available to talk about the course material. However, I seethe with anger when I'm forced to go over inane explanations of students' car trouble that prevented them from showing up.

Still, students keep sending in excuses. These excuses have a strange tendency to multiply right before spring break or on days when essays are due. I don't want to be cynical here, mind you. It is more than possible that relatives fall sick in droves, cars break down massively and alarm clocks fail by the thousand on the day before spring break. Who am I to say it can't happen?

There is just one question I have. Why is everybody's sickly relative who develops serious health issues on the day of the midterm always a grandmother? In the past three weeks I had three grandmas sick and one dead in my classes. Not a single grandpa, aunt, uncle, etc., though. It's not like I wish any harm upon these relatives, of course. I'm just wondering why grandmothers always fall sick according to such a convenient schedule.

CV vs Resume

I just discovered that my students are not aware of the word "CV." Only one student in a group of 24 finally figured out that it means the same as "resume." Is it some new generational thing? Is the word "CV" not in use any more? If so, then I have a problem because the word "resume" is one of those words (together with "focus" which I always make sound like "fuck us") that I haven't been able to learn to pronounce well in English.

Revelations

It's a day of revelations for my students. First they discovered, just like Moliere's M. Jourdain did, that they speak in prose. Then, I asked them (in Spanish, of course) if they spoke Castilian.

"No!" they answered in unison.

"Yes, you do," I said. "You just answered a question in Castilian."

"Get out of here!" exclaimed one of the students in English.

I'm not sure how I would translate that response into Castilian in a polite manner.

Manners

I know that this will make me sound like a hopelessly outdated old grouch but I just have to ask: what's happening to people's manners nowadays? It seems like my students have no inkling whatsoever what it means to behave politely and courteously towards others. And they are only 10-15 years younger than I am.

Yesterday, for example, I had a student yawn continuously in my face during my entire lecture. I understand that yawning is uncontrollable, but why not cover your mouth while you are dying it? Or, at the very least, why not avoid sitting in the front row where your yawning will be especially visible. Every time my gaze alighted on this student, I'd see a barracuda-like mouth opened right in my face.

There is also this charming habit that students have of referring to one in the third person in their presence. "What did she say? Did she mention the exam? What does she wants us to do?" is always said in a very loud voice as if "she" weren't there at all and couldn't be asked directly.

Letting the door slam in front of a person's face is another activity many students practice on a regular basis. Often they seem to have no idea that it might make sense to hold the door for people walking behind them, especially if those people carry a huge stack of books and papers.

Interrupting people's conversations seems to be a completely acceptable practice for many. I might be talking to a student or a colleague in my office, when a student would barge in, plop their backpack in the middle of my desk, interrupt the conversation that is going on and launch into a recitation of what they need for me without as much as a word of greeting.

The strangest situation of all in what concerns student manners arose when I left the classroom for a couple of minutes during the break only to come back to see two students rummaging through my bag. I was brought up in the belief that another person's bags, pockets, and desk drawers are sacred and not to be opened under any conditions unless the owner's express permission has been obtained. "What on earth are you doing???" I asked students in a state of a complete shock. "Oh, we are trying to see if you still have those handouts from last week," they responded completely unfazed. And continued to rummage through my bag like it was the most normal activity in the world. That bag is very obviously my handbag where I carry my wallet, keys, and personal hygiene items, but such considerations seemed to be alien to these two students. 

It also happened to me quite a few times that I would be standing in the hallway, talking to somebody with my bag over my shoulder, only to feel somebody tugging on the bag from behind. Every single time it would be a student trying to get a handout they forgot to request in class out of it or trying to stuff their homework into it. 

As much as I don't like it, I still have to recognize that this complete lack of good manners is a lot more common in female students. Male students still hold the door for you, say "thank you", "please", and "could you?" They are much more likely to knock on one's office doors before they come in, and they never make loud comments about the teacher's appearance in her presence. I have no idea why this happens, but the difference is very visible. Is there some profound difference in the way boys and girls are brought up that denies many women any knowledge of what constitutes good manners?

Advice to Students From A Real College Professor, Part II

6. There is this thing called a syllabus that usually is a veritable fount of useful information. You can often find answers to many of your questions right inside it. Aside from the syllabus, the title of the course can be a good indication of what to expect from said course. If you are taking Advanced Spanish Conversation, it probably means that there will be quite a lot of conversation. In Spanish. At a fairly advanced level. If you are "not into talking but more. . .like into writing and stuff", maybe it makes more sense to take Advanced Spanish Composition.

7. If you are mystified by the readings and don't understand a single word that is being said during the lectures, it might make sense to inform the professor about this during the semester and not five minutes before the final exam. There is nothing even the best professor in the world can do to help you succeed in the course after you have failed every single assignment.

8. Bombarding your teacher with e-mails after 11 pm and expecting an immediate response is usually a waste of time. Do you really need to receive an email telling you what the homework is? Or might that information be gleaned from the syllabus?

9. Don't be fake. Gushing about how much you love the course and how much you are learning from it is worth a lot less than showing your interest in it by the quality and quantity of work you do in the course.

10. Classes are not for catching up on your sleep. If you are so sleepy that you just can't keep yourself awake, stay at home. I'd much rather have people not show up to class than sit there snoring in my face.

And if you want to be a truly spectacular student that everybody is dying to have in their classroom, here is what you might want to consider:

1. Work on your vocabulary. Whenever you encounter a word you don't know (either in your readings or in the lectures), find out what it means and try to learn it. Everybody loves a student with a good, rich vocabulary.

2. Ask questions. Intelligent questions that show your interest in the course material are always welcome in class and during office hours.

3. In the courses you really like (especially in your Major), do more than what is required for class. Ask the professor what extra readings you might do, bug your teachers with questions, show that you are interested in learning. No opportunity to enrich yourself intellectually should be wasted.

And remember: learning is supposed to be fun even when it's extremely hard.

What Motivates Good Student Evaluations

For some unfathomable reason, the best student evaluations I get are always from the course that during the entire semester bothered me the most. Whenever I feel that the course isn't going too well, that I'm failing, that the students are bored out of their heads, are lost, confused and uninterested, the evaluations turn out to be absolutely spectacular. I have no idea how this works. Is it because I worry so much about the course and keep changing things around to improve it?

Last year, there was this Intermediate Spanish class that I taught. We'd been given a really bad classroom with no technology, so I could neither show videos nor bring music to the classroom. Everything was done on an ancient transparency projector that kept breaking down. The classroom was so depressing that the students were permanently subdued, silent, and extremely hard to involve in group activities. The course material (the course concentrates on the subjunctive in all forms and tenses) was extremely difficult. Every day in class I felt like I was failing to do anything good or useful.

Then it turned out that the students loved the course and loved me. Several of them have declared Majors and Minors in Spanish after it. Almost every single person who took the course continued taking other classes with me. When I meet students from that class in the hallways, they light up and sometimes try to hug me and declare their love for me. 

I have no explanation for this.

Advice to Students From a Real College Professor, Part I

Often it seems to me that there are students who are quite unaware of the horrible impression they are making on their professors. I know that nobody sets out to look like an unpleasant, whiny, annoying individual whose name profs dread seeing on their class lists. Maybe a few timely pieces of advice could help such students understand the error of their ways and make their relationship with their teachers more productive and enjoyable. Here is a list of suggestions I would like to offer to students:

1. Always remember that professors are human. Your prof might look like a scary, intimidating entity whose only goal is to make your existence as unpleasant as possible. This is, however, not usually the case. For the most part, college profs have no interest in torturing students or making them miserable. They just want to do their job.

2. Telling your professor that you HATE their course and/or that you only take it because of the "stupid GenEd requirement" is probably not a good idea. In all probability, the GenEd requirement wasn't created by your professor. It is also highly likely that they don't want a reluctant student like you in their classroom either. Would it make you feel good if your professor came up to you and announced, "Oh, my God, I really HATE having you in my class but I have to because of the stupid GenEd requirement"? Not really, I guess. Do your prof the courtesy of keeping your dislike for their course, for them, and for life in general to yourself.

3. If you messed up, own up to it because this is the mature and responsible thing to do. Everybody messes up every once in a while. Taking responsibility for it, however, will help you overcome the bad impression you made with your screwup. I had a student once who cheated and was caught. She came up to me and said, "I cheated and that was wrong. I'm really sorry. I promise not to do it again. I know that you don't have to believe me now that I cheated, but I will try to prove to you that you can trust me." And then she left. This was a very mature way of handling an unpleasant situation that made me feel a lot of respect for this student. 

4. If you messed up, crying, screaming at the professor, blaming them for your errors in judgment, telling them that you hate them, and complaining to everybody in sight how unfair it is to be penalized "just" for cheating, will probably not endear you to anybody. You are an adult now, which means that you are responsible for your own actions.

5. Scoffing, rolling your eyes, emitting loud, annoyed sighs, and mumbling "God, this is stupid" will not turn you into anybody's favorite student. If you don't like the assignment, the best thing to do is to suck it up, complete the work, and not make a spectacle of yourself and your dislike for the task.

More Funny Stuff from Midterms

I told you I will finally be able to blog a lot now that I got my new computer. So here are some more funny statements from student midterms:

"La Celestina is the story of people all of whom are complete idiots." (This is a great way of defining this work of literature, in my opinion.)


"The name of Don Quijote's sidekick is Pancho Sanchez." (This is so cute I don't think I can even lower the grade for this.)


"The name of Don Quijote's servant is Pancho Villa."


"Don Quijote likes reading fantasy novels."

The rest of the exams were really good. It's especially curious that students who took a literature course with me last semester have improved their language skills dramatically. The use the kind of sophisticated vocabulary that makes me feel extremely proud. I wish I knew how to make more students realize that yet another advanced grammar course will never be able to take their language skills to the same heights as a simple literature course. The word "literature" in the course description terrifies them for some incomprehensible reason, and they just want to take language courses in perpetuity. When I was an undergrad, I was forced to take an advanced literature course right after Intermediate Spanish, and that proved to be a fantastic idea.

I believe that advanced language courses should be cancelled altogether and substituted by literature and culture courses in the target language.

Midterms: Funny Student Responses

OK, this I just have to share with my readers. A student who has to identify a paragraph from a work of literature writes:

"This excerpt is from a novel called Don Quijote. The name of the writer is Cerveza." ("Cerveza" is Spanish for beer, in case you don't know.) I'm trying hard not to write on the margins that maybe drinking less cervezas will help the student remember the name of Cervantes.

She Just Wouldn't Go Away!

People who were reading this blog in the Fall semester of 2010 surely remember the story of my recalcitrant grad student who made me miserable every Monday that I taught the graduate course. (In case you weren't around, here and here and here is the story.) I hoped that after the end of the semester I'd never have to hear her name again in my life. Would that it were so! Yesterday, I received an email from her supervisor telling me that the student in question was planning to go on a Study Abroad trip to Spain and asking if I'd recommend her for that program.

On the one hand, I like Spanish people a lot, and I'm not sure I want to inflict this person on them. Every student we send on a Study Abroad trip is a reflection on our university. What will the people at our sister institution in Spain think of us if we send this kind of student to them? A university's reputation is hard to make but easy to break. On the other hand, I like my colleagues here at my department a whole lot too. If the recalcitrant student doesn't go away on her Study Abroad trip, she will have to take classes here. Can I subject my nice, kind, hard-working colleagues to the nightmare of this student's presence in their courses?

There is the added problem of this student's Spanish being so weak as to be practically non-existent. I have a feeling that she will not enjoy being in a Spanish-speaking country for an entire semester if she even found it hard to understand the assignments that I repeated very slowly in class. But then again, if I prevent her from going, she will think that I have some personal grudge against her for writing me a nasty evaluation at the end of the course. Which she did and which I actually don't mind all that much. In the evaluation she said that I'm obviously very knowledgeable but she still didn't like me because I wasn't approachable enough. Sadly, it never occurred to her that it might be her fault that people don't want to be approached by her. 

So now I have to solve yet another dilemma that has to do with the student. And it will be a long time before she graduates. 

This whole situation made me think of one of my favorite songs that I'm going to embed here (don't pay attention to the stupid advertisement.) If you don't like Pet Shop Boys, I have to ask: what is wrong with you, my friend? Do you know that people have actually written doctoral dissertations analyzing their song lyrics?

Students and Medication

Even though I cultivate a significant distance from my students and do not believe in being buddy-buddy with them, students tend to feel very comfortable in my classes. We have a lot of group activities in which I participate, so even in a big classroom we get to know each other quite well. So they share things they might not have otherwise revealed to other "adults." (Yes, they actually refer to themselves as "kids" and to me as "an adult." Which sounds especially funny when the "kid" in question is a 6 foot 5 football player. Besides, quite a few of the "kids" in my classes have actual kids of their own.) 

Once I asked students what they did to prepare for exams. I'm very naive in many respects, which I'm always ready to confess. All I know about hard drugs is what I've seen on television. I have no idea which drug is supposed to be sniffed, injected, smoked or eaten. As for prescription medication, unless I'm so sick that I'm being carted into the ER, I'm not going to take any. I don't even take Tylenol or have it at home. So my question to the students was aimed at eliciting information as to whether they prepare for exams by going over their notes alone or get together in groups to help each other. Innocent things like that.

Imagine my surprise when in response I got a list of medications that students routinely take to help them concentrate and stay awake while they are preparing. Turns out there is a tradition of taking ADD medication as part of preparing for exams. There are also "coffee pills" and other things whose names I didn't even manage to remember. Students just kept rattling them off like it was the most natural thing in the world. When I recoiled in horror, the students found that funny. Now they must think I'm some hopelessly ancient fuddy-duddy. 

Since that conversation, I stopped giving cumulative final exams because I don't want to drive my students to a drug addiction. It's sad, though, that these young people have such a cavalier attitude to drugs. It's also quite shocking that they believe - for some unfathomable reason - that their own young brains are insufficient to carry them through the finals week. When I was an undergrad, I never took less than 6 courses per semester (I was in the Honors program). I also worked while going to school. Sometimes, I wouldn't get enough sleep and felt tired. But I managed to do very well in the program without even thinking about medication. Today, however, my experiences are seen as outdated by the new generation of students. 

Rewarding

There is this student, let's call her "Emily", who wants to do a Major in Spanish with no previous background in the language. This means that she has to take a full year of Beginner Spanish, then a full year of Intermediate Spanish, and then a semester of Advanced Spanish (2,5 years altogether) before she can start taking more advanced literature courses. "Emily" feels that this is too slow. Two and a half years of just taking language courses is boring and it doesn't take her closer to her goal fast enough.

So she decided to take an advanced literature course while still in her second year of language learning. Everybody told her that this cannot be done, she will fail the literature course, it will be a huge waste of her time. I thought about it, though, and decided to let her into my advanced literature course. I like students who want to achieve more than what's expected from them.

Now, the course is very difficult. We start with Medieval readings that even native speakers find hard to understand. "Emily", who is still just beginning her Intermediate Spanish II, is struggling. But she works hard and perseveres. We wrote our first, very difficult mini-quiz last week. And "Emily" did great. She got 90%, which puts her ahead of almost everybody else in the course.

It's students like "Emily" who make my job so rewarding.