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.
