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A Thank-you Letter to a Student I Hardly Remember
After nineteen years
Dear Diana,
I just found your 2002 letter, 19 years old already. You addressed me as Maggie instead of Margie, but I will forgive you, especially because every word meant so much to me.
I don’t remember your face or anything about you, just that you were an English student of mine at the university. With hundreds of young people entering my life for a few short months over more than a couple of decades, it’s the rare face or name that still remains in my memory.
All the same, please know that you are much appreciated, for your act of gratitude is one rare in university circles, and even rarer in our fast-paced modern world.
You may not have imagined how, at the end of every semester, I kept postponing the reading of student evaluations, fearful of the negative ones. Even one student’s harsh judgment of my methods or my classes would drag me into the dumps. Other teachers would remind me that one or two were an exception and shouldn’t be considered representative. As humans, however, we are so vulnerable and so needy of acceptance.
You apologized for using your mother tongue and not mine but admitted that you could express the feelings of your heart much better in Spanish. No need to apologize!
