To My Dear Educators,

Before we delve deep into this letter, I'd like to begin by saying thank you. Thank you for choosing to share your knowledge and experiences with me and my fellow students. Thank (most of) you for putting in the time to help me when I need it. That being said, thank you for answering my frantic emails with questions you may or may not have already answered in class.

I know it can be difficult and sometimes even frustrating to teach and deal with students—especially college students. We can be lazy, arrogant, and ungrateful, or so it seems to you. Just like you, we do have a lot going on. Although we seem to always squeeze in a nap, we have tests to study for, research papers to write, and books to read all for classes other than yours. It's time you knew—your class is not our only priority.

It seems no professor has ever been able to understand that it is hard to juggle it all. Yes, we value your class and everyone would like to succeed in it, but some of us may have classes that are more important or just have a lot of other stuff going on. So before you give us that disconcerting look and tell us we need to put more effort in, consider where all the rest of that effort is already going. Whether it be internships, more difficult classes, family issues, club meetings, jobs, sports, and who knows what else, we have to spread our effort out as equally as we can. Sometimes, however, some things receive less attention, and sometimes, one of those things is the reading you assigned that week.

All students want and need you to know that we have other things we are responsible for. And although it's good to be hard on us sometimes, we do need to be cut some slack every now and then. On the other hand, do not cease to push us as we all need to learn how to take criticism and work hard if we're going to make it in the real world.

To add onto the idea of preparation for the real world, I have had many discussions about classes with friends, comparing how our professors teach and what we find most effective. We're all used to taking tests as they have been the biggest way to measure student success since we began school in kindergarten. However, are tests that count for 40 percent of our final grades really effective?

In the workplace, we're almost never going to have to memorize anything. We'll be able to look up information on the computer, in a book, on a calculator, or elsewhere. One of my friends had a teacher who tested them, but allowed them to look up answers by any means, which alleviated pressure and seemed to make students more willing and able to learn.

For some material, testing and memorizing may be necessary. However, for other subjects, such as English, memorizing what happened in each book and poem that we read throughout the semester just seems silly and impractical. It's easy to confuse plotlines and meanings among so many different works, which makes writing an effective essay on a certain poem or novel extremely difficult.

My point is, professors, to please consider tweaking your teaching styles to include what we will really need to know and use in our careers. You were a student once too, so you know what our lives are like to some extent and how frustrating it is to have a professor who is not understanding.

We know you don't know everything, even though you have a Ph.D. We ask that you do not try to be our friends or act like us. We need you to be our professors and educators. We don't need someone striving to be liked, but we need someone to push us even if that means being the enemy at times.

Sincerely,

One of many hardworking students