The Bliss of Teaching

Despite a serious migrane headache, today I experienced an amazing bliss. I've worked really hard and put myself on a limb to teach this course on racism. I have somehow managed to get half of the class, who are super privileged kids, to write a long paper on the question: Are you a racist? And they're all answering yes and recognizing all of this privilege that they have and questioning themselves like I don't think I've ever seen college kids at this university question themselves. I am so proud of them and myself. I am a bit nervous that I'll end up with really crap teaching evaluations, but in the end, I've really guided them to actually learn something important, so who cares. They'll be thinking and talking about this class for the rest of their lives.