Tuesday, December 27

Dear Slackers: Teacher's Last Letter to Students on Why They Should Study

Dear Slackers: Teacher's Last Letter to Students on Why They Should Study:

Jaime O’Neill is an English teacher who penned this Dear Students letter for his last class after teaching for 40 years. Every student should read it, but probably won’t and therefore will learn the hard way (just like the rest of us):

There are always excuses for not showing up, or not turning work in. I’ve heard them all. But lives built on excuses generally don’t turn out well. [...]

Few people care whether you succeed or fail. You are not showing up to class for your teachers or even your parents. You’re not doing these assignments for anyone but yourselves. If you cut classes because your teachers bore you, then you should be dropping those classes, not piddling away your GPA.

I went to a community college too. I screwed up in high school, graduating in the bottom third of my class. But I married and became a father not long thereafter. Those responsibilities made me quite serious about the second chance offered by the community college system. It’s difficult to maintain a slacker attitude when you’re up nightly with 2 o’clock feedings of an infant daughter whose vulnerability and dependence on you are impossible to overlook. Had I not shown up regularly and done the work conscientiously, I would have blown that second chance. I would have had a much different life, a much poorer one, not only materially but intellectually and even spiritually. And my children would have had poorer lives too, because what I learned in college was shared with them in ways too numerous to count. I’ve never regretted the portion of my youth that I devoted to study.

Like Woody Allen supposedly said, 80% of success is showing up: Link

No comments:

Post a Comment