Indifferent, no, bad teachers

Excuse me, but why did some of you folks out there decide to become professors? You know who you are. You don't really care about your students, you think grading papers is boring, and you've basically given up. And since you have tenure you don't really frickin' care about the consequences of your indifference.

One of my Lost Boys just came home and told me he made a "D" in a course he's been studying so hard for - Microbiology. He tried to communicate with you and ask you where he went wrong, but you kept fobbing him off, telling him it was too late to change the grade. It is the end of the course, so this means he will have to make it up at a later date if he wants to graduate. Hey, it's only a course, right? Wrong. You just added another couple of thousand of dollars to his college debt.

If you had even a smidgen of empathy, you would have noticed that his English is not perfect, that he is swaying on his feet from fatigue, and that he is struggling merely to keep up. He will plod away, of course, despite your indifference and animosity. He will take your damned course over because he has no choice.

Have you ever bothered to talk to him? Do you know that he spent twelve years of his short life in a refugee camp, barely existing and subsisting on rice and a few vegetables thrown his way? Do you know he shared a school "room" with other children and that they had one book among them? Do you realize how magnificent he is for persevering and making C's and B's as a pre-med major despite his appalling lack of schooling? Do you know what a frickin' genius he must be?

Have you bothered to help him. Have you shown him a few test taking tips. Have you taken him aside and mentored him in any way? Of course not. You don't care, do you? In fact, you don't even know who I am talking about. When he asked you where he could have done better, you just brushed him aside and told him you would post the grades on your door. You, Prof, are a classic jerk and it's people like you who make cynics of us all.

And my poor Lost Boy, the one who actually once believed that if you work hard and study diligently, rewards will come his way? You've simply managed to prove to him, once again, that life for him will never be better and that people don't really care.

Oh, and in case you wondered, Prof, he wants to become a doctor so he can return to the Sudan and help his brethren in need. Bet you never had a dream like his.

Seriously Speaking: Lost Boys of the Sudan

Two Lost Boys live with me. One is 22 years old; the other is 25. They escaped the horrors of the Sudan when they were tiny children. Both survived such unspeakable tragedies that they rarely talk of them. Nightmares of watching their parents and siblings die and villages burn, and of barely surviving a 2,000 mile trek first to Ethiopia and then to Kenya in bare feet without food or water haunt them. Years of living in refugee camps have sapped their strength, their teeth, their bones, and their overall health.

Manyang and Ayuen came to me through Catholic Charities two years ago. They arrived in America as teenagers thinking they were coming to the land of freedom and dreams, only to find that when they came of age and had to leave their foster homes, life in the U.S. became so much tougher than they ever anticipated. All I can really give them is a small shelter from the storm that rages around them.

To all who observe them they are grown men. But when you get to know them, they are little lost boys. Without parents. Without country. Without a proper education or the network of support that we all take for granted.

They work doubly hard so that they can send half their earnings to friends and countrymen left behind in the refugee camps, and fall exhausted into their beds every night. Our fast-paced materialistic culture bewilders them on so many levels. Committed to saving their friends and families, they cannot afford movies or restaurants or frivolous toys and possessions.



So as we all plan our joyful celebrations for the holidays, let's not forget the millions who died or are starving. Let's not forget Darfur and the ethnic cleansing that is still going on there. Thank you for reading.