Thank you for reminding me

June 02, 2018

By M. James Harding

A student made my day, today—and probably for a long while after. The day began downhill. I woke up with an ocular migraine, pulled myself out of bed, swallowed a pill and hoped for the best as I peddled off to class. It was our last physical class meeting and we'd been working on final drafts that were examining John Sayles' film, Lone Star, which is unimportant, but whatever. The student I'm referring to is an older student, ESL, who emigrated from Iraq after the war. I’ll call her “Usra.”

Usra told me that she was advised by the chair of the English department to specifically take my class because she'd "learn a lot." After a few weeks in my class she went back to the chair and told her that a horrible mistake had been made because my class was driving her crazy. The chair told her to stick with it, and today she thanked me and gave me a Starbucks gift card as a token of her appreciation.

It gets better (before it gets worse). She told me that she spent a lot of time in the writing center and that she'd often work with the chair when drafting and revising her essays. I was surprised at this news and then she said, "Actually I work with all of the tutors and they love Professor Harding's prompts. The chair, Ms. Abraham, said that you think differently and it is fun to work with your ideas. You do things differently, but students learn a lot from you." I can't describe to you how this made me feel—well, I could try, but for brevity's sake... I recently applied for some full time positions. I even got an interview at the place that I really wanted to teach at, but the dean pulled me into her office and told me that while I was fabulous there happened to be uber-fabulous people interviewing with me. I felt a little bummed—OK, at 3:00 a.m. that night I woke feeling like my soul was a tin can in a compactor and I've spent the last week or so trying to straighten it back out. This student has no idea how much her words meant to me, but I wanted to tell someone and I guess you all are it. P.S. I'm teaching two sentence-level courses next semester, so my punctuation skills will finally be jacked. P.P.S.

If you're still reading, there's actually more to the story. I remember back before the Iraq War I had been reading New York Times Op-Ed writer Thomas Friedman's ideas on the war and I bought into them. I believed that the war could be a good thing. I believed in Wolfowitz's notion that Iraq could become a "garden of democracy" for the region and so I supported the war. I watched as things turned for the worst and I followed Friedman as he documented blunder after arrogant blunder and I realized, along with Friedman, that I'd made a mistake. OK.

I made a mistake. Everyone does, right? But this student brought it all home to me and then she had the audacity, the sheer, appreciative audacity to heap burning coals on my head by thanking me for my help.

That Starbucks card...ahh...it turns so many ways in my head and in my heart. It uplifts me and wounds me. It makes me so happy and it makes me weep, really weep. Usra told me that she never would have emigrated to America had it not been for the war that destroyed her way of life. And now, here she was in my classroom thanking me for helping her learn how to think critically, in English no less. I am floored by this kindness and I am doubly floored by Usra's kindness in the midst of her rage and pain. I am trebly floored when I think about my earlier oh so stupid, oh so arrogant ideas about war. Her kindness has really left me undone.

Dear God, what a horribly beautiful day. I will never redeem this card. It now sits pinned to my wall so that I can see it every day. And I will be reminded of the stupidity of war, of my thinking; but I will also be reminded of what it means to be appreciative and thankful when you've lost everything. I will be reminded until the day that I die what it means to be the best kind of human.

Thank you, Usra, for reminding me of why I teach.

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M. James Harding taught writing in the Tunxis English & Humanities Department for a number of years. He now teaches at a few colleges in Sacramento, California, and outlying areas.