When I was in high school, my dad gave me some of the most valuable advice that I’ve ever used in my academic life. It was something I never forgot, something I still put into practice to this day, and something I know many of my peers could benefit from.
“Talk to your teachers,” he told me. “They’re people, too.”
For some, this thought is a total revelation. What do you mean, those evil gremlins who guard the gradebook are actually humans? Who would have thought?! But the fact is, so many students don’t act like their professors are people. They don’t act like anything they do could matter to a teacher beyond giving a grade or deciding whether or not to pass or fail a student.
As a proud ‘teacher’s pet,’ I want you to know that you’re wrong. I wish you knew about the professor who pulled me aside to tell me one of my teammates is doing a great job in class, or the professor who called me into her office to check that one of my friends is okay, since she heard about the bad breakup. I wish you knew about the stories they could tell, the 11:00pm email they answer, the funny videos, the tweets, the special gluten-free cookies, and the Star Wars stickers. I wish you knew about their compassion and understanding.
Even if it was just about the grades, there is so much benefit to reaching out to a professor. I can’t tell you the importance of the extension I received on a semester-long project, or what it meant to have a professor pray over me when I was going through personal struggles, on top of the extra day to take the test. Or maybe the time I asked a professor to take a final early, so I could make my flight and he told me just to not worry about taking it at all. I can’t even begin to tell you the benefits I’ve seen, academically, from reaching out to my professors.
But those things pale in comparison to the most valuable things I’ve gained. Don’t get me wrong, that time I definitely-probably-shouldn’t-have-made-an-A but somehow still did? That was something. But that time I ran out of class crying because I was so stressed, and came back just to find the professor already sitting down with my advisor to figure out how to help me through everything? That was amazing. That was an incredible feeling, to know that these professional, accomplished adults believed in me and had my back.
So yeah, I’m a teacher’s pet. And I wouldn’t trade those relationships with my professors for the world. While other people look back on their college classes with a mixture of disgust and regret, I’ll probably still be emailing back and forth about my favorite books and the hilarious YouTube video that reminded me of their class.
