Students bring me things

We all have had those moments in which someone has graciously done for us or given to us things we just flat don't deserve because, after all, who among us is that good a person. The picture you see here is of something I flat don't deserve. It is a 1 lb. (454 g.) canister of jasmine tea, quite literally direct from China (I have a student who was born in China whose mother just came back from there, bringing, my student said, "this much tea"--holding out her arms as though she was carrying a large basket of laundry). It's from Fujian Tea Import and Export Co., LTD, in case you're interested.

One pound of loose-leaf jasmine tea. It makes me wonder how many pounds of tea I've consumed in my lifetime and whether I'll live long enough to brew and drink all this.

I probably will--or I hope to. It's pretty good tea.

Another student this semester has given me a small tray of homemade divinity--two kinds: almond, and brown sugar. Another, who wrote his term paper on the Enron bankruptcy and scandal, gave me his copy of The Smartest Guys in the Room, which I'd always wanted to read and/but how did he know that?

The more jaded among you are thinking, I know, "Poor John: still naïve after how many years of teaching? Have you not noticed the inverse relationship between the waxing of student gift-giving and the waning of the academic calendar?" Why, yes. Yes I have. But none of these students needs to try to buy grades; each is sitting quite prettily in the ol' academic cat-bird seat. Indeed, it's been my experience that my gift-giving students have been, without exception, among my very best. That's what makes their gifts so humbling: they feel well-served; I keep worrying that I've underserved them.

Anyway. Below the fold is a list of other gifts I've received from students. It's not a long list, as you'll see, but they all matter, and some are quite special indeed.

I still have a few days of reading, grading and averaging ahead of me. Happy finals week to fellow teachers, colleagues, and students.

From my teaching days in Mexico: a large ceramic owl wearing a mortarboard.

From my first college teaching job: several letters from students thanking me for teaching them.

Two small wooden carvings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that a student bought in Venezuela.

A wooden carving of two pelicans (?) sitting on a log that a student bought in Nicaragua.

A print enlargement of an original drawing called "Voices of Stephen Dedalus" that a student had drawn during our class's discussion of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It's a black-and-white drawing of perhaps two dozen distinct yet tessellating faces. My student called it a doodle, but imagine Keith Haring trying his hand at an Escher drawing.

A mounted photograph of a sunrise somewhere in the Arizona desert that a student took.

The Songs of Leonard Cohen. Decidedly unfunky, but decidedly funk-inducing, if you know what I mean. I once listened to it all the way through; my mood afterward was such that I am now afraid of it.

From my current school: In addition to the divinity and tea and book, a book titled The Desire of Ages.