For shame.
Plus, my involvement with the students tends to be minimal. Unlike their teachers in the engineering faculty, we forlorn outcasts in the English department don't have much to do with the students beyond our allotted teaching hours. Whereas, for instance, the professors in the School of Electrical Engineering will be expected to do everything for their students over their four years of attendance from initial university orientation to rewriting their final dissertations (true); we get them for maybe one 15 week term and then subsequently, academically speaking, never encounter them again.
Given that we are teaching English this is probably the way both sides prefer it, but occasionally you come across the motivated star, shining all that brighter for the otherwise indifferent gloom from whence she or he emerges.
This past Friday saw me say farewell to two such stars, Kazuma and Hironaru. Both surprised me by coming to my office (separately) to wish me farewell and thank me, yes, thank me for teaching them English. Not that they needed much teaching. Most of their English study they did in their own time - my class hours wouldn't account for their fluency. But I was gratified nevertheless, and proud of them in a way too. Kazuma has secured a job with Sumitomo Industries, one of Japan's largest industrial conglomerates, while Hironaru is off to join Toshiba's international division. Both of them stressed the importance of English in securing these jobs (both of them, as it turned out, had to take English tests and do job interviews in English).
If only I had more students like them, I would (a) perhaps stop my steady slide into jaded cynicism about my chosen, ahem, profession; and (b) be able to kick this bottle-of-Bushmills-a-day habit I have developed.
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