When the teacher wrote "see me after class" on your paper, what did they say to you?

[Answered by Ralph Cordell via Quora.com]

From the other side of the desk -

I once wrote “see me after class” on an exam paper I handed back to a student in a university Intro Biol class I was teaching. It was in the South shortly after 9/11 and based on his name and appearance, the young man was obviously east Asian or Middle Eastern. He had also done an outstanding job on the exam - getting by far the highest grade in the class - for the second or third time. He seemed a bit of a loner and I just wanted to check in with him. see if he was okay and be a friendly face. I told him it was obvious that he was not a local southern boy, that I suspected he was from a part of the world that was not particularly popular in the area at the time and that I hoped he was doing okay. He told me that the treatment that he was getting was nothing compared to what he received in his homeland, that he was a Bahai from Iran and left his country to avoid all the religious persecution. I congratulated him on his excellent performance in my class and asked about his other classes and goals. He said he was getting A’s in all his other classes and hoped to become an engineer. The university where I was teaching is good school and very strong in some areas. However it was not particularly strong in the applied physical sciences and engineering. I suggested he consider transferring to a school where he would be more challenged. When he asked me where, I said “Oh University of Chicago, Stanford, Princeton, MIT - someplace like that”. I am not an engineer but tried to name off a few schools that I thought would be good.

Several months later, he emailed me - telling me that he had taken my advice, checked all those schools and found that MIT was the only one that would accept transfers at that time. Would I write a letter of recommendation for him? The young man had done what I suggested so I had no choice but to support him. Now, I am a pro at LORs and wrote one of my killer letters of recommendation for him. I shot straight but included all the info I would want to see if I were on the other end- telling what I knew of the young man, the nature of our relationship and my opinion of his abilities and performance - all with factual examples. I concluded by saying if they were half as smart as I thought they were, they would take him into their program.

A while after that, he contacted me to say that he was transferring to MIT. Several years later I did a GOOGLE search on his name and found that he had received a masters in electrical engineering from MIT.

Some “see me after class” notes may lead to dark places but most are written to get a better understanding of a situation. I tend to think that they indicate that an instructor/teacher cares enough about the situation to try to resolve it. I was fortunate to have had some really excellent mentors and have tried to honor them. I also respected my students. Most were in school because they wanted an education. Some took my classes because they had to - others because they wanted to. Some faced major obstacles in their lives including rather weak educational foundations. Still most came and tried. This is one of several that stands out.