A good day indeed

Thursday was such a good day for me that I hardly know where to start pontificating about it.

As many of you know, I am in Organic Chemistry this semester. Hardly has there ever been a more villified and feared class among the college body. I certainly would not be taking it if I didn't have to and I live in terror that I'll suddenly realize the teacher is talking in Greek and I might as well drop out of college as soon as pass this class. We had a quiz on Monday that I had done a brief study session for and thought that I understood all of the subject matter it entailed. However, as I stared blankly at the quiz, it did, in fact, seem to be written in Greek. But I buckled myself and went through the grueling process of deciphering what exactly the question was trying to pry out of my brain. We got the quiz back during lab on thursday and I was shocked at the bright red marks all over the page.

All check marks and a 20/20 written boldly at the top! =) I hadn't missed a single one! I was very pleasantly surprised. And to top it all off, as I was working on my experiment, Dr. Stevens came into the lab and was asking everyone who Hannah was. I identified myself and braced for the impact of whatever he was going to tell me I had done wrong. But instead of yelling, he shook my hand. I had been the only one to get a perfect score on the quiz and he was proud of me! He had gone far out of his way simply to congratulate me and it has left a permanent glow on my face ever since.

I haven't felt so motivated to excel in a class since middle school. As an honors student, it has frustrated me throughout high school and college that despite going above and beyond the call of duty, few people ever truly recognize you for it. In fact, students who are struggling tend to get more attention than those who are doing well. Which is fine and dandy because they need it but often those of us who do the work get overlooked and it leaves me wondering why should I bother? I'm sad to admit that there have been classes (many, many classes) that I have felt apathetic enough about simply to accomplish the bare minimum because of this exact behavior.

But now, because of the effort of a professor to personally congratulate me, I want more then anything to continue doing well in this class. I might even venture to say that I like organic chemistry *gasp* simply because this has shed such a positive light onto the class. I plan on writing Dr. Stevens a thank you and explaining to him how much this gesture has meant to me because that, truly, is what makes a person a real teacher.

Scholarly huggles!