Now that's dedication.

There was a student in my class last quarter who was amazingly persistent. She attended almost every office hour I conducted, and always brought new drafts and intelligent, focused questions to these meetings. Writing didn't come especially easy to her, but she consistently wrote well. Her second paper (out of three) in the class impressed me to no end; she explained the development of the central love relationship in She Stoops to Conquer in a way that makes me think of Goldsmith in a different light.

Now it happened that this student had an exceptionally busy last couple of weeks in the quarter, and that her writing suffered on her final paper. She had some terrific local arguments, but the whole thing didn't quite cohere in the way that her second paper did. Her grade, consequently, was not as high, although it was very close to the class average.

After the quarter was over, this student e-mailed me to ask if she could meet to discuss her final paper grade, "just to see if she could do better next time." I thought at first that this was a disguised way of asking if she could persuade me to change her grade, but when I met with her I was pleasantly surprised -- she really did just want my future advice as to how she could improve her writing. She accepted my criticism very well and thanked me at the end of the meeting.

Then, today, I received an e-mail from her explaining that she had revised her old paper and wanted to know if she could get my opinion on it. In other words, she took the time to revise a paper that she knew could no longer affect her grade, and that I don't think she will use for any practical purpose (I'm not aware, e.g., that she needs a sample paper for an application, or anything like that). She revised this for herself, it seems, just to prove to herself that she could do it, and that she could have received a better grade if she had had more time and had put more effort into it.

This is incredibly strange in my experience, but also awe inspiring. It makes me wonder what I could do if I had her persistence.