In Defense of That Student

This time of year, my teacher friends and I tend to swap stories about students we haven’t seen since the first month of classes. We go through their reasons with a fine-tooth comb and debate the morality around not believing that their grandfather fell ill for the seventh time this semester. We (most of us anyway) spend the semester giving our students the benefit of the doubt. We know that college is difficult and a five-course workload is sometimes entirely unmanageable. So we give the extensions, make room in the syllabus for extra writing days, and hope that our class is where students feel they can finally catch their breaths. 

A change happens when finals season rolls around— our students feel it and so do we. In the fall semester especially, the temperature drops but the classrooms stay cold. The students show up to class less and less, shield half of their faces with hoods, and start wearing earbuds more. When I was a student, I had myself convinced that these small changes go unnoticed. That if I sunk in my chair more, my teacher could see me less. Being on the other side of it now, I can confirm this is not the case. I stand in front of twenty-five students at a time and, after four months, I’ve memorized their faces like the back of my hands. I notice when they dye their hair or when they forget their glasses. I’ve familiarized myself enough with their mannerisms to know when they’ve had a hard week or have gotten little sleep. (Their dropped shoulders, under-eye bags, and star-shaped pimple patches forming constellations on their cheeks are dead giveaways.) Students try desperately to cling to any bits of energy they may have left, but lose their grip all too easily. A student of mine recently came to class in tears because her chemistry professor scheduled their final exam for a Saturday afternoon. She told me how Saturdays are the only day throughout the week when she has a break in her schoolwork and time off from her waitressing job. “I don’t even have time to study for the test anymore,” she said through her sobs. 

These moments are the times when I feel an overwhelming sense of protection over my students. I bake them brownies and wipe their tears with the sleeve of my sweater. I tell them to put their heads down if they need to take time for themselves or to leave early to make it to the cafe in the lobby before it closes. I sit with them in class explaining the importance of having a good hook even though it’s the tenth time I’ve said it and write their homework on the whiteboard regardless of it being on our syllabus. And, after a while, I even start to believe that their grandfather is sick (again). I choose to repeat these habits and have confidence in my students’ stories no matter how extraordinary they may be. As a teacher, the trust I establish with my students is sometimes the only thing I can go off of. If I don’t show that I believe them, how can I expect them to trust me?

So, when I catch myself rolling my eyes over late papers, I feel embarrassed for judging my students. An immense feeling of guilt weighs on me when I picture any of them in pain— physical or emotional. It’s easy to look at the students who overload my inbox at the end of a semester and quickly label them as that student. It’s easy to take it personally when they don’t show up for months when you’ve worked hard to make your classroom a safe space. And it’s easy to give in to the urge to tell them no when they ask to turn in their last nine homework assignments for full credit. But then I remember that just nine years ago, I was that student. I think back to the nights I spent in my university’s library cranking out six papers at a time and running to shove them all into my professors’ mailboxes with my head hanging low. There was one semester where I spent a whopping twenty-seven hours in the library with no sleep because I realized, too late, the way I threw away half of my academic year. When I get these emails, I try to reclaim the mindset of my 18-year-old self: a homesick girl with a mean boyfriend and a sick grandmother, and imagine what could have happened if someone had noticed my sunken shoulders and under-eye bags. 

I pride myself on my familiarity with failure. I know what it feels like to fall behind in class and have that feel as though you’re falling behind in every other aspect of your life. The first thing I tell my students at the beginning of the semester is that I failed my first two years away at college which resulted in expulsion. This, of course, always leads to some shocked faces. I remind them that failure isn’t something that puts you in a box permanently, rather it’s something that provides you with a chance to try again— and who doesn’t do something even better the second time? I find that sharing this part of myself with my students builds trust within our relationship from the start. It shows them that I’ll do everything I can not to leave them behind and that, at the end of the day, I won’t view them differently if they fail because there’s always a chance to undo it. 

So, to that student who may read this, ask for the extension and don’t be afraid of being truthful. Tell your teacher that you had a tough time adjusting to your schedule or that you haven’t slept in three days. Tell them that you miss your mom and you realized, almost too late, that you were throwing away a full semester. Talk to them and be as open and honest as you can be. Turn in that late work anyway because maybe you’ll catch a break.

And to my fellow educators, some (if not all) of you have been working in this field for far longer than I have. You have more experience dealing with these students than I do. You’ve extended well-wishes to far more grandparents than I have. But maybe, just maybe, the next time you receive one of these emails, you realize that you’ve been on the receiving end of them for too many years to remember that at one point or another, you knew what it felt like to be that student. Maybe that student was your roommate, your sibling, or the student you first dealt with as a teaching assistant your senior year. Or maybe, just maybe, that student was you.