no fear no hate no pain no broken hearts
Moments when I do like my job. Third-year student who has had an exemplary career, passed everything first go, arrives in his final semester and fails the one first-year elective he needs to complete his degree before graduating next week. Devastated - he has landed a brilliant opportunity in London next year if he graduates. Remembers, at the last minute, that he had a year at another university before coming here. Dashes off to said university to obtain transcript. Sprints into my office, panting and quivering, a mere hour or two before the absolutely final grad notification deadline this afternoon and anxiously proffers said transcript.
I finangle a single general credit out of his external record, process instantly, trot it down to the admin office for capturing, confirm all is in order, trot back and tell the young man, "OK, you should be fine to graduate". He puts his head down on the chair next to him and bursts into tears. Is overcome and speechless for a minute or so. Tells me, emotionally, "You have changed the course of my life with a single click!" (Which is not quite true, it required multiple clicks, two printouts and at least three lines of typing). Leaves, is heard uttering subdued whoops of glee all down the corridor.
I spend a large chunk of my life gently informing students that I am not, in fact, able to make all their problems, particularly the consequences of their own less than sensible choices, go magically away by waving a wand. Occasionally it's bloody nice to be able to actually wave the wand and make it happen. Hideous power is mine, and I can actually use it for good. I'm all glowing and slightly weepy on his behalf. It's so nice when the gazelles triumph against the odds, says her sublimated maternal instinct proudly. (I don't go to grad ceremonies any more. They make me weep buckets from approximately halfway through the third student capped.)
The tour of the Eurythmics is now onto Touch which is one of their very early ones and the album which introduced me to the group when I was a teenager - it's still associated in my mind with those afternoons listening to music with the boy on whom I had the terrible crush. It's sheer fluke that the song from my subject line was playing when I drove up to campus this morning. In retrospect, I should have taken it as an omen.
I finangle a single general credit out of his external record, process instantly, trot it down to the admin office for capturing, confirm all is in order, trot back and tell the young man, "OK, you should be fine to graduate". He puts his head down on the chair next to him and bursts into tears. Is overcome and speechless for a minute or so. Tells me, emotionally, "You have changed the course of my life with a single click!" (Which is not quite true, it required multiple clicks, two printouts and at least three lines of typing). Leaves, is heard uttering subdued whoops of glee all down the corridor.
I spend a large chunk of my life gently informing students that I am not, in fact, able to make all their problems, particularly the consequences of their own less than sensible choices, go magically away by waving a wand. Occasionally it's bloody nice to be able to actually wave the wand and make it happen. Hideous power is mine, and I can actually use it for good. I'm all glowing and slightly weepy on his behalf. It's so nice when the gazelles triumph against the odds, says her sublimated maternal instinct proudly. (I don't go to grad ceremonies any more. They make me weep buckets from approximately halfway through the third student capped.)
The tour of the Eurythmics is now onto Touch which is one of their very early ones and the album which introduced me to the group when I was a teenager - it's still associated in my mind with those afternoons listening to music with the boy on whom I had the terrible crush. It's sheer fluke that the song from my subject line was playing when I drove up to campus this morning. In retrospect, I should have taken it as an omen.