Dear Professor,

Do you know how unique you are? Do you realize, that amid an endless blur of mentors, coaches, teachers, and professors, you have somehow broken through to set yourself apart? Are you aware of how fundamentally revolutionary you are? That you, one of hundreds of people a student may encounter during their academic life, have marked yourself as something different. You are the Professor Who Could.

Maybe you don't know what most college student experience on a daily basis. Maybe you don't realize how many students move like zombies from class to class, hardly noticing the rotating cast of educators that take the stage in front of them. Maybe you don't know about the professor who reads from a powerpoint for 49 minutes each class period and distributes the same pre-made tests every two weeks. You don't know about the professor who blinks slowly as she looks up from the same lecture notes she uses each year, startled that someone has interrupted her to ask a question that indicates critical thinking or awareness. You don't know about the professor who calls a name wrong for the fourth time after asking every time how to pronounce it.

You are not this professor. You are the professor who calls me by name when my attention inevitably starts to wander. You are the professor whose classroom or office I hang around after class in hopes of extra wisdom and conversation. You are the professor who makes your lessons relevant, who commands the attention of a room full of college students, who makes us interested in a class we never expected to care about. You are the professor who laughs with us, who pushes us, who demands that we rise above the usual drudgery of a college classroom.

You are not just a professor. You are the professor we will remember in ten or twenty years. You are the professor who made a difference.

With the Greatest Appreciation,
A Student