Enjoy your coffee!

The semester is officially over, but I'm still trying to tie loose ends with last minute project submissions, incomplete grades, and students "clarifying" their grades. I have barely closed the gradebook for Fall distance class and I'm already working on my syllabus for Spring (already a late start!). Gotta love the academe, right :) But that's okay, it's part of the training...and it's emails like the ones below that make it all worthwhile:

• Just want to let you know that I truly enjoyed your class this semester. Truth be known, I wasn't looking forward to taking this course, because I tend not to like managing people, budgets, and number-crunching. But you made the class very interesting. I especially appreciated your exceptionally positive interaction during the chat sessions and your timely responses to my emails during the course of the semester.
  
• I've definitely learned a lot of useful and practical information. Thanks for being so helpful and understanding, and for being such a devoted teacher!
• It was great to have you for the course instructor and I hope to get to take a class again from you in the future. This semester has been great and I appreciate how interactive you were with the class…it really gave us a class atmosphere. I hope you have a Merry Christmas.
• Thanks so much! I'm excited I did so well -- I've felt like I was learning so much all semester but of course got a bit nervous just before the exam...[sent after getting results for her final--she got an A, by the way]

Then of course I also get the notes inserted in projects, written on the final, posted during chat, etc:

• We believe that we have achieved all the goals outlined in this project. We have maintained a food cost percentage below 35%, labor cost...[more financial analyses here]...The last goal we have to fulfill is to get a 95% or better on this project. [maybe I should use that tactic...guilt trip the teacher! hahahaha]
• That WAS extra credit, right?
  
• Are you going to give extra credit projects? [This after missing several quizzes..uh...NO]
• Whew! I think I just got carpal tunnel after all that writing [my exam appeared to be a killer...it really wasn't--well, that is if they studied :) ]
• You promised partial points, right? Right? Please?
  
• I was waiting to receive all my project feedback and grades before sending you this so as to not look like I was brown nosing :)

All that said, one of my mentors sent me an interesting anecdote. Thought I'd share since I feel that with Christmas fast approaching, I know I have to take some time to calm myself and "enjoy the coffee"...

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some
expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.

While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee in most cases, just more expensive; and in some cases, even hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups... and then began eying each other's cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."

God brews the coffee, not the cups..........enjoy your coffee.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care!