saying thank you

It seems strange to think that one would have to consider whether a thank you note can be deemed appropriate. I would guess there was a time when a handwritten thank you note was the norm if someone did something nice for you, where it would be considered poor manners if the note weren’t sent.

Nowadays, we send a hasty email. Fairly generic, maybe even with an automated signature. And I’m sure for most situations that an email will suffice.

But what about the situations where it doesn’t seem to be enough?

I’ve recently returned to college after a really long break, and I’m majoring in Biology. Not the easiest subject to jump back into. Remember asking yourself in high school when you would ever use calculus again? Well, I didn’t, so I forgot it, so I had to take it over. That and a myriad of other courses.

It’s been fairly routine for the past three semesters. Coasting through the classes, not really being inspired by much at all, just following the path with my head down, backpack heavy on my shoulders.

I started early in the semester doing review questions for my Plant Form & Function class. I just wasn’t getting what the professor was asking for. So I went to office hours, sat in the little chair across the big desk, and asked about the question. The professor looked at me, and then just sort of reiterated the question again. I again said that I just wasn’t getting what he was asking for. He tilted his head to the side a little, one of those looks that made me feel really small and insignificant, and again basically reiterated the question. But then there was a shift. He told me to try to work it through, and to come back with my ideas the next week and we would talk about what I had done.

I left frustrated and grumbling, quite possibly cursing silently, or not so silently.

And I went home and worked up the question. I crossed it out. Worked it up again. Read some scientific papers to see if I could figure it out, but only felt increasingly stupid. The next week rolled along and I showed up at his office with my scribbly paper in hand, along with another handful of questions that I had jotted into my notebook during class. I was nervous that he was going to give me that look again, the look that maybe I should have just kept answering phones or that I was out of my league.

Instead, he went over the scribbly paper with me. He talked about all the steps of the question. He answered all the little questions I had scrawled into the margins of my class notes. And it all made sense. But not only did it make sense, I wanted to learn more. I drove home puzzling the complexities of enzyme functions in my head. Instead of just plodding along on my path, I started to look around at all the opportunities around me and everything that I had the chance to learn. After every class, I would have a new page full of thoughts and questions that popped into my head during the lecture. And I looked forward to each time that I would get to sit down and talk science with him. He even wrote a letter of reference for me for a research program, which I never imagined I would get after only six weeks of classes.

I would imagine that hundreds of students pass through a class each semester without ever talking to the professors face to face, and would hope that a professor might want to know that there was one student that he really reached. But I find myself wondering if it’s okay to write that thank you note. He will still be my professor for another two weeks, until the Animal Physiology section of the course kicks in. An email seems horribly insufficient. A few lines thanking him for taking the time to write the letter of reference doesn’t seem enough. How do I thank a professor who has inspired me, sincerely and genuinely, without it seeming like I am jockeying for a grade?