Professors, you teach at a small Christian College. With your level of education and credentials, you could teach at any college or university in the country. Despite this, you have chosen to remain here at our small school. From the rowdy, facetious students to those with straight A's, you stuck it out. Many of you choose voluntary pay cuts to keep our college up and running. We have so much to thank you for and this list doesn’t even begin to cover everything. But here are just a few reasons we are grateful to call you "Our professors, our only professors, who make us happy, despite our GPA. You’ll never know, professors, just how much we love you, please don’t take our scholarships away" (Thank you, Holy Smokes for your continual insipration, by the way).

• Thank you for staying. You are steady, reliable, safe adults. We know we can go to you with anything.
• Thanks for the open doors. Whenever you are in your offices, the doors remain open, allowing students in for help with class or just to chat. Because you open your doors, we have a place to open our hearts.
• Thank you for the tissues. So often office visits end in tears, whether it’s over grades, stress, or just life. You all have a supply of tissues on hand.
• Thank you for not judging us due to our 8 AM attire, hair, and lack of makeup. We know we look rough, yet you still let us into lectures. We appreciate the chance to wear sweats more than you know.
• Thanks for grading with a curve. You don’t always give them, but when you do we practically hold parties in your honor.
• Thank you for the little things. For all the times you have brought breakfast casserole to or Krispy Kreme to our 8 AM's and candy bars to our exams. The food you supply is a welcome relief from the caf. Thank you for the toostie roll container, the Keurig machine, the book recommendations (then bringing copies of the book to class because you realized we could never afford them), and all those times you’ve invited us to your houses and cooked us dinner. You have become our family, our home away from home, and we appreciate it more than we will ever tell you, because after all, you do control our grades, and we can’t give you that much power.
• Thank you for caring about our well-being. Every time we pass one of you, you smile and make small talk. Those interactions mean the world to us, because they show us you care about more than just teaching and leaving.
• Thank you for putting God first. We need Godly examples desperately as we try to find our places in this world and grow into the adulthood that came out of nowhere. You give us wonderful examples to model ourselves after.
• Thank you for your passion. It is evident in your lectures, your steps, and your tones. We know you care deeply about what you teach, and that makes us excited to learn! It is more than a lecture, it is your love.
• Thank you for your knowledge. Each and every one of you worked so hard to learn all the things you are now teaching us.
• Thank you for all the times you accepted late work, given us extra time on difficult exams, extended deadlines, hosted study groups, and rounded grades up. Thank you for your grace.
• Thank you for being real. You share your lives, struggles, hopes, dreams, fears, hurts, insecurities, and experiences with us. Thank you for letting us learn from your mistakes, and being open, honest, raw people. It’s nice to know you are more than red pen brandishing grading machines.
• Thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty of a professor.

Sincerely,

A Grateful Student.