I&#039ve been teaching at this university for about a year total, and as an open preference advisor/teacher, I get the kids who have no majors, have no idea what they want as their major, and honestly have no idea what they&#039re doing at college in the first place. These aren&#039t the conditionally-admitted kids, so they&#039re generally pretty average with the occasional 4.0 in there. I&#039ve taught not only here but at SMWC, so I&#039ve seen a range of students, having been one myself since 1998. I see students come and go, and for the most part, I don&#039t lament that. That&#039s how college is. Until today.

Out of a class which originally had 26, I have about 14 who still show up on a regular basis. One of my students, the one who inspired me to write this post, is a pretty good student, being there most of the time and always trying hard to get his homework in on time despite his guard duty with the National Guard and fiancée. Other than periodically talking my ear off after class, I&#039d consider him a pretty average student. It&#039s during the &#034talking my ear off&#034 sessions though that I&#039ve come to learn that he&#039s far from ordinary and that I&#039m going to do everything in my advisor/teacher power to make sure he pushes himself hard to really succeed.

We&#039ll call him Russell (for lack of a better name). Russell&#039s twenty-five like me but is only now a freshman. He has declared his major in biology, so normally I woudln&#039t have him in my class, which is reserved for students with no major, but he didn&#039t declare until partway through the semester. Like I said, he&#039s in the National Guard, and more often than not, that&#039s why he misses Monday classes from time to time. He recently lost a friend to warfare and had to attend his funeral instead of class. I told him that I understand, having in-laws in the Air Force. His fiancée is five years younger than him and yet further along in her college career because she started at a &#034traditional time&#034 out of high school, and periodically I hear about her in class when I ask my students about examples of how they spend their time or what responsibility is. Russell is always good to call on for an answer in class because unlike most of my students, he always pays attention and reads the material. I assigned them all to groups to work together on a presentation for the end of the semester, and not only did he take charge of his group, he had already done most of the research for the topic before we even talked about what they would need to do for the assignment. By research, I don&#039t just mean going to the library or looking stuff up on-line, I mean going out of his way to find newspaper articles, campus pamphlets, and even going so far as to interview many of the administrators on campus about the topic.

It isn&#039t just my class where Russell&#039s going above and beyond the call of duty. He has talked to me about an essay he was to write for an English class. He chose &#034methamphetamines&#034 because meth is beyond prevalent here in the Hoosier state. Again, more than books and journal articles, he began talking to police officers, driving to Indianapolis to talk to drug officers in person, attending guest speakers and e-mailing other sources about it. This five-page essay which he could have BSed like any normal student has become a project which he has worked on diligently with the professor who is encouraging him to publish the work when it is all compiled.

Still, after all this, he never ceases to amaze me. Today after class, Russell caught up with me outside of the building to tell me where he was Monday and why he hadn&#039t caught up on the reading in &#034Tuesdays with Morrie.&#034 Guard duty again, but in addition to that, he just found out that his fiancée is pregnant. Already living on his own holding down his job at the Guard and attending college full-time, he now has the added responsibility of a child on the way. How was he acting? Calm, serene. In class, we were talking about what the &#034Perfect Day&#034 would be, and everyone laughed at him when he said that it would be spent under a tree with no one bothering him with questions and problems. Now I understood his answer even more. He&#039s looking forward to the child, but his fiancée is talking abortion, and she doesn&#039t want to tell her parents anything. All this he tells me as we walk across campus in the cold drizzle, me with a trench coat and umbrella, him in shorts with a T-shirt. I tell him a little about my sister who was in college and got pregnant before wed-lock, I offered advice on how to juggle school and a familiy, I explained how my family dealt with my sister&#039s unexpected pregnancy and how we couldn&#039t live without the rugrats now, and I told him that I was proud of how responsibly he was handling all this.

Responsibility got him started on more of his past, how his family once kicked him out, then how he was kicked out of a remedial school, living on the street for a year after someone stole what money he&#039d had. Russell talked about the hate, how it consumed him and how the cold of that time was worse than he ever wants to be again. He jokingly said that that&#039s why he could stand to be out in the forty-degree weather in the rain as we spoke. He talked about his alcoholic father who used to beat the kids and his mom, and how when his father was dying and asked for forgiveness, he gave it to him despite his mom&#039s admonishments. He then expressed his hope that he&#039ll never be anything like that to his kid, how he wants to play paintball and football instead.

I stared at him. This talk, bulky guy who was the epitome of calm, the model of responsibility and gumption, was telling me of his hardships and how he&#039s scared about his future because his fiancée&#039s family is moving to Florida and she might want to go with them even though he may get a promotion in the Guard here soon which would help out should she decide to keep the child (a decision he&#039s leaving to her). Here he is telling me this, and all I wanted to do was hug him and tell him that he was the greatest student I&#039d ever had, will probably ever have, and how I wish I could do anything in my power to make sure that he succeeds, that he gets everything he deserves because he&#039s working so hard for no other reason than to prove it to himself that he can.

He said that he may not be back in the fall because of having to help his fiancée out emotionally and supporting her financially. I really hope he comes back in the fall. I really hope he keeps being the amazing student and that he doesn&#039t lose the spirit he got back when he let go of all that hate and anger at the world. He can really go somewhere, I&#039m sure of it. And if I have anything to do with it, he will. It&#039s rare to get such a shining example of what a person can be in my life, let alone in a classroom full of slackers, stoners, and frat-boy wanna-bes. I look forward to teaching Russell for the rest of the semester, what&#039s left of it, and I really do hope that he&#039ll keep in touch regardless of what direction he chooses. Otherwise, I&#039ll really miss him.