I, too, have taken piano lessons at a woman’s home. But unlike Dorian, this teacher does not earn the number one spot in my list of teachers for whom I am most grateful. In fact, she doesn’t even make the top five.
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In Dorian’s post about his anonymous thank you letter, he ruminated on the possibility that perhaps it is just inherently (and unfairly) easier to feel grateful towards teachers who teach fun subjects. Well, I (Amanda) do not think this is the case. My music and art teachers actually fall quite low on my Gratefulness totem pole.
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The five teachers that I feel most grateful towards do not share a subject (or a subject category) at all. But the quality that they DO share is constructive honesty.Constructive honesty is different than “honesty.” Honesty is not inherently something to be thankful for. For example, I don’t feel grateful to the gym teacher that bought me a miniature basketball in his ‘honest’ appraisal of my ability to get the regular sized ball up to the hoop. This honesty…well, basically just means someone has assessed and given up. And it just makes you feel kind of bad.
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But when the honesty is also constructive, it can give direction–or make you much more confident in accepting your ability and pushing its limits. So–I feel grateful to my calculus teacher, who told me that my ability to write proofs was abominable, but also said that INSTEAD I should focus on visual problems. And I am grateful for my psychology professor, who gave me a B on a paper–not because it was a bad paper, he wrote next to it, but because he thought I personally didn’t live up to my ability.
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And to my English teacher, who was openly disapppointed that I did not love Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as much as he had expected me to (he did not know my lack of enthusiasm for it possibly resulted from me trying to read it all in one night).
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I wrote my letter to this last teacher, but I could have easily written a letter to any of the above.
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And perhaps I will! Just as Dorian said, it’s really pretty fun, writing thank you letters to people you actually feel thankful for.
Difficult Things 