The Best Teachers Are the Teachers Who Care

Yeah? So what if it's a cliche? Cliches are cliches because they're true, right?

How else do you explain the fact that a professor, upon seeing me this morning wearing the same clothes I was wearing last night, kept insisting I go home and get some sleep.

Mind you this was after I slept through both her class and her lab time (what back in high school we would have called a 'class period' and a 'lab period') yesterday.

I was exhausted and I stayed up again last night with the intention of getting a lot of work done for her and for my other classes, and that happened, but only to a point. Choosing to start this blog at four-in-the-morning kind of helped and kind of didn't help. Writing down something of the thoughts that bounce around in my hollow noggin did lead to finally writing about those damn hominid skulls. And when I handed it to her, she was appreciative and said it all looked neat because I typed it. (I try to type just about everything 'cause my handwriting simply sucks. I remember one of my elementary or middle school teachers calling them "chicken scratchings." Huh. You know more and more I think those teachers were abusive. Value judgments upon value judgments upon value judgments... That school gets no fucking money from me when I'm a world-famous comic-book writer.)

But the point is that after she told me to go to sleep, I did. Unfortunately, even after setting something like five alarms, I slept through the second chance I had to do the lab. The class is large enough that there are two lab sections, so at the professor's suggestion I was going to slip into that second section's lab time.

But that didn't happen because I was in slumber-land. So I came to see her about a half-hour after the second section's lab was over. She said it wasn't a big deal, because other people hadn't shown up either, so she is planning a make-up day for this lab that I can take part in.

Wow.

And you know what?
This woman has a fucking Nobel Prize. (Well a team-shared Nobel Prize, but a Nobel Prize nonetheless.) She shouldn't have to deal with my bullshit.

But she does. Graciously.

And that's part of what makes her a great teacher.

Now I'm writing a one-page reaction paper for her on three chapters of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, then I'm going to read about 'ice core' something or other. I don't have a clue about any of it right now but I will before the make-up lab. I've pretty much been doing only work for this professor non-stop since last night around 8:30. Why? Because she's a good teacher who cares and I think that's pretty fucking cool.