Before you've met your new crop of students, before you've had to deal with the excuses for why a quiz was missed, an assignment was tardy, or directions were fundamentally not followed ... the night before a new semester begins promises a panacea. This semester, you think, this will be the one where my students are bright and engaged and excited about learning. They'll be delightful, witty, incisive, prepared. They'll breathe fresh air and inspiration into my scholarly work. They'll inspire me to be better. We'll learn exciting things. I'll be clearer in my expectations. We'll be sad when the last day of class comes.
Knowing myself as well as I do, I know most of those things are true every semester -- yup, every one, without fail. Sure, there will be some high-maintenance students who, it must be acknowledged, will commit no errors on their own (it's always someone else's fault, and it's best if you work in higher education that you accept this fact right now). But the majority of them -- majority, not just plurality -- will be delightful young minds and souls who wander into my classrooms starting tomorrow.
I can't wait to meet them, and I'm so grateful to have a job where the hurt of having lost the last fantastic bunch is soon dulled by the excitement of meeting the new fantastic bunch.
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