The Hard Handshake

I receive a thank you from A or B students occasionally. It's rare to receive thanks from average or below average students. Today, though, this dude who didn't speak very often in class--but wuz present ever damn day--handed in his research paper and then reached out his hand to give me perhaps the hardest handshake I've ever experienced. He thanked me three or four times before he left and kept saying how he learned a lot. He also said he once thought he'd fail high school cuz he didn't think he could pass English. And it's not as though he aced my class. In fact, he never (so far) scored higher than a C on an essay. At midterm, he had a D. But some peeps come out of high school with a much longer way to go than others, and for them I suppose there's "a lot" to learn just to become C or D writers at the college level. So I celebrate the C and D students today--the ones who worked for those grades, anyway--and I also celebrate students who appreciate honest graders rather than some shithead who just gives them the okey doke and sends them away smiling with grades they didn't earn.