My Teacher Is a Superhero

By CHLOÉ LIND ‘27

    Exeter is, admittedly, hard. The consecutive sleepless nights become unbearable, and the major assignments become all-consuming — inevitably leading to a dismal spiral of self-doubt and stress that gnaws away at your once blissfully ignorant childhood self-confidence. Ok, ok — perhaps that was a bit dramatic, but if I’ve learned anything at Exeter, it is that having an instructor who believes in the value of canceling class at least once a week minimizes the hardship to which an Exonian is subjected to a daily basis. 

    To aid in identifying whether the scheduling gods have blessed you with such an instructor, I’ve compiled a guide to assist you on your journey.

1. Class on the Quad or in D-Hall

    These instructors will lead your class on a spontaneous trek across campus to the academic quad — or if you’re truly golden snake lucky (Elm Lunar New Year allusion), D-Hall. Once seated in a red lawn chair or at a long Wetherall table, you’ll open your book and hold a Harkness discussion as usual, goofing off periodically because, let’s face it, your teacher is the GOAT. 

2. 8 a.m. Donuts

    You walk into your first class of the day looking…on the rougher side (one of the more generous euphemisms capable of describing your current state). Your backpack is half-open, your left sneaker is untied, and you can’t quite recall if you did last night’s eight assigned math problems. 

    Harkness warrior kid with three years of Calculus BC under his belt and several summer internships at NASA starts lamenting to the teacher about problem #164, despite getting the right answer. You are on the brink of a full-blown crash-out. 

    But then, salvation in the form of a dozen assorted Dunkin’ Donuts appears in the middle of the Harkness table. Your legendary instructor urges you to grab the pink-frosted sugar in the middle, and just like that, your stomach (which you neglected to feed this morning), has been pacified by copious amounts of sugar and carbohydrates. Score. 

3. Actually Reads Your Essays

    We’ve all experienced the sheer anxiety of receiving the “Assignment Graded” notification on Canvas, clicking it frantically, only to be greeted with a slew of ambiguous comments, most of them along the lines of “Expand on this” and “?”.

    In the end, you are met with a three-sentence justification for your soul-crushing grade, and it sounds as if your teacher is critiquing a completely different essay written by someone else who just happened to have had a nearly identical life experience. 

    In contrast, a legendary instructor will not only read through your entire three-page narrative about the time you allegedly broke Aunt Minni’s orchid vase and had to come clean or pin the fault on your brother (which, let’s be real, was hastily fabricated at 1 a.m.), they will actually care.

    When you open the graded PDF file, you’ll be greeted with a collage of red marks, comments off to the side, and the occasional smiley face if you’re lucky. And the final comment? It will thoughtfully and extensively analyze the “personal” narrative you haphazardly concocted in the wee hours of the morning. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself contemplating your literary genius and your “impressive use of call-back and themes of interpersonal growth.” 

4. Hustle-Culture Commiserator

    Some teachers will interrupt students talking amongst themselves about their seemingly never-ending Canvas to-do list and brush them off, fondly reminiscing that when they attended Exeter in the late 1970s, the workload was much greater, and instructors were far less tolerant of adolescent slacking.

    But the true diamonds in the rough are the ones that will sigh just as dramatically as you and commiserate about their own towering stack of in-class essays to be graded. These are the teachers who will spend the first twenty minutes of Friday’s class making it known to everyone at the table that this week — along with the previous one — absolutely obliterated them. 

    And if you complain to them about their Tuesday morning test, they just might reschedule it. Because deep down, their desire to administer and grade that test is even less than your desire to take it.