Hungry Again

My hungry student was back today for three hours. I worked with him for almost 15 hours this week, though he was in the writing center at least 5 more and spent another 6 or 7 hours with his math tutor. He works so hard, harder than anyone I've ever seen. This material, entry-level English and Math classes, is nearly insurmountable for him but he will not relent until he learns it, tackles it, finishes his work. He made the Dean's List his first semester. The first person in his extended family to ever go to college and he made the Dean's List.

He got a phone call while we were working this morning. It was his father, and he talked for a few moments before hanging up the phone, visibly shaken and upset. He told me his cousin just died, shot in a gang fight. A cousin who, if he had lived, faced 40 years in prison for shooting a police officer. Two of his best friends were killed in the same fight over Christmas break.

He went on and on, pouring out a story of horrors I cannot imagine. Football players are targets in his town because they are on their way out of there, away to college, away from the poverty. My student has been shot at on his way home, hiding behind his duffel bag.

I told him we had to stop, that he should go talk to his dad, process this horrible news. He looked at me, put his hand on mine, and said

"We have to finish this. It's my only way out of there."

This kid knows he isn't going into the NFL. He knows he is, academically, leagues behind most students at this university. And he knows his athletic gift has given him an opportunity to get a college degree. And so I had to wipe away my tears and concentrate on his assignment.

He poured himself into the paper, trying desperately to summarize the quotes he picked, to explicate film theory, insert examples. He pounded his fist on the table and told me

"I am never gonna be as smart you. Am I?"

What to say to this young man? I told him of course he was as smart as me, that he is in fact much smarter than me at certain things. I told him reading was like football practice, that you have to put in many hours before you are good. How do I make him see that he has had to navigate challenges I will never face? That my insignificant ability to talk about literature isn't any kind of smart that really matters?

I can't get his eyes out of my head, the look on his face when he finished his essay and emailed it to his professor, two days early. I want to be like him, to have his courage and hunger to succeed. I have never respected a person so much. I want nothing more in this world than for him to graduate from college and succeed. I hope I can be there to watch it happen.