Dear college professor,
I am so sorry, not for me personally but for most of my generation. I have watched too may videos of students yelling and screaming at their professor and have had way too many conversations with students who have bad grades and blame their professor for said grades. Phrases such as, “She hates me” or “He is just out to get me” are all too common and I am sorry. As a graduate assistant who occasionally teaches, I kind of understand.
You have a hard and thankless job. You are often the one blamed for a student’s grades, you get handfuls of emails every day asking that you explain yourself or to be gracious and hand out extra credit or paper and project extensions. You lecture and look out to a sea of hair because everyone is looking down at their phone, taking "notes" on their computer or daydreaming out the window—I am openly guilty to the window part. You grade paper after paper, knowing most were written the night before and that students are not grasping what you are attempting to teach them. Yet you keep on teaching in spite of it all.
As a human, I am constantly in awe of you. How you are so patient and kind is beyond me. How you do not just start punching us all in the face is an amount of restraint I fight for every day. You have literally sat where we now sit and even beyond. You have worked harder than most of us ever will, yet you listen as we cry and complain about the amount of work we constantly have. You do your best to help each student succeed, from pushing back due dates to even helping some students learn how to take exams. You stay up and grade, make lesson plans and think about us and about how to help us. You actually want to help us!
I have witnessed professors stand and take it as students yell at and berate them. I know you know that some of your students do not like you, that they say awful things about you behind your back and think you are simply out to get them. Yet you come into class and patiently teach us anyway. Your amount of professionalism astounds me.
Thank you for fighting for the next generation of leaders and forcing them out of the muck and mire of millennial postmodernity. You recognize that not all of us are what the internet portrays and you are willing to chisel away at all the coal in the world to find that one diamond in the rough. Thank you.
Please keep teaching. Please do not give up on this generation. Please find the student who is your silver lining and focus on them, I know each professor has at least one. Please keep caring for us in ways we will never know. Please keep failing us when we need too and not letting us skate by. Please keep pushing us for excellence and expecting more out of us each passing day. Your efforts do not go unnoticed. I notice you, even if I don’t know you.
Know that in every classroom, there is that one student who loves you, and your class, and is taking your class because they know they will be a better person for it. Keep teaching, because the world needs more patient people, but mostly more patient professors.
Sincerely,
A thankful and hard working Millennial
