Why I love my job...

 I am very fortunate to love my job. I do not love every part of it, of course. As my Dad always said, "If it was easy, they wouldn't call it work." I am not fond of grading papers and record keeping. I hate assigning grades to students, it feels too much like a judgement on who they are, though it is supposed to be a judgement of what they have done. Sartre says that man is "... nothing else but the sum of his actions," , and he's a pretty clever fellow. I'm not sure that I agree with him. After all, we don't judge a baby by its accomplishments, and we should be quick to forgive people for their mistakes. But I need to move on before I give myself a philosophy headache. I'm not here to talk about the things I don't like about my job, but to share a specific instance of something I do like.

My favorite class is Building Relationships in English, a course of my own design. At the end of the semester, I almost always ask the students to tell me something they have learned in my class, and how it has changed, or will change, their life. Sometimes it's an exam question, sometimes an interview, and sometimes just a course survey.

This year one student submitted an answer that blew me away. In fact, it made me cry the first time I read it. And the second. Be warned, grab a tissue. My student wrote:

I learned everyone needs to be loved. I thought loving is only for people who have enough money and time. I thought being loved is too big thing for me to feel. I was not ready to be loved. So i avoided to be loved by someone who says they like me or even my family.

But everyone needs to be loved because love heals. Now I know that I deserve to be loved. So I will be able to open my mind to people who like me and accept the love. Then I can have people loving around me. I will also give love to people who I love to heal them by loving.