Some days it's all worth it

A few years ago, I had a young lady in an intro class that I was teaching who had a reading comprehension learning disability. We worked together to come up with a plan that would let her work with her tutor while still getting her work in to me (the class involved reading responses for every class meeting, and her tutoring sessions were timed such that she often hadn't seen the tutor to go over her assignments before the responses were due...). At the beginning of the semester, she did not have much self-confidence, but over the 14 weeks that she was in my class she really started to get it - to look at the world critically, etc. I saw her confidence grow. At the end of the semester, she told me that I was the first teacher she'd ever had who told her "You can do it - you just have to figure out how to work around your learning difficulties."

Last year, I think it was, I ran into her in the hall and she told me that she'd declared a sociology major and my believing in her was a big part of why.

This morning, the undergraduate program director sent out the list of seniors who are being considered for departmental awards.

Her name is on it.

I nearly cried for joy. I'm asking to be there to help present any award that she gets. Whenever I talk about why I want to teach college students, I tell her story.