Today there was a student.

This semester I’m working as a teaching assistant, for a logic class. A couple of weeks ago, I tried to lead part of a review session. I stayed up half the night trying to make a presentation that was good enough. But when the time came to get up and speak in front of an auditorium full of students, all of them looking down on me from above – I froze up and I couldn’t do it, and I asked one of the other TAs to take over before running away out of the room.

I found a corner somewhere to try to remember how to breathe, until somebody came and found me and picked me up and took me to somewhere comfortable to be. I was so mad at myself.

“It used to happen to me, too,” our prof tells me, kindly. “It gets better with time.”

“Maybe it’s good for the students to know that their teachers are humans with feelings who make mistakes,” a friend tells me, later.

Before I froze up and lost my voice, I managed to ask if anyone in the class was feeling confident with the material. About a third of the class raised their hands, which was a good thing. Then I asked if anyone was struggling and feeling super lost, and I promised not to judge them – I just wanted to know so that I could pick out the faces of the people who needed help.

Only one student raised a hand. Shyly, close in front of his chest, so that nobody else could see. I knew that he wasn’t the only one, but he was the only one who was brave enough to tell me. I shut down pretty soon after that. But afterwards, when I made it back into the room to find my things, he made eye contact and smiled at me.

The next week, he found me and asked me when my office hours were. And it took a little time, but he dropped by today. We got out the whiteboard and some markers.

He’d fallen behind in the class, but he’s also sharp as hell and doesn’t know it. He got every single practice problem right with almost no help at all – just somebody to sit there and smile when he asked if he was going about things the right way.

“I want to try some of these problems without help,” he tells me, so I leave the room for a minute to fill up a water bottle. When I got back, he’d gotten a problem wrong, and was frowning.

“Just as long as you’re here, I can do this,” he told me.

That isn’t the point, but it was still good to hear that again. It’s been a long time.

I have missed working with students. So much. The thing about students who need help is that they almost never ask.

But whenever they do, I will be there.