My Good-bye Post

Well my dear and lovely students, it has been wonderful to teach you!  Not only are you great writers with interesting things to say and expressive and intelligent ways of saying them, but you have amazing personalities, too!  I have grown fond of each of you on a personal level.  Collectively, your class was my favourite class that I have ever taught at ELI.   Your pleasantness and the respect with which you have treated each other and me have been very refreshing to me as an instructor. I admire each and every one of you for your many fine qualities: your intelligence, maturity, patience, dedication, courage, loyalty, compassion, and, of course, your writing skills.

In connection with those fine qualities of yours, I would like to say that if you ever need reference letters, please let me know, and I will be happy to provide them for you!  Please never be shy about asking for such things.  (Just try to give me a warning about two weeks before I need to write the letter, if that's ok.)

And now I must take my leave of most of you as most of you are moving on. Saying good-bye to people for whom one has deeply-felt feelings of friendship and affection is never nice, but we are fortunate that it is a small world.  Thanks to the powers of transportation and communication technologies, we can indeed keep in touch, even as we move on in our lives.  Indeed, just as it was always a pleasure for me to read your blog entries, I hope you will be brave and consider maintaining your blogs!  I will keep reading if you can keep writing!

Thank you for accepting me as your instructor, and for the graciousness and friendliness with which you always carried yourselves.  I will miss our class, the best class I have ever taught at ELI, and I will miss you, too.  I hope you will all stay in touch! 

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If you wish, you can find me on Facebook (search for "nathan@nathanbauman.com", not my work address), and in any case you have my work email address also.  I never "friend" students, but I do accept "friend" requests from students once the session has been completed.

Finally, I must apologize for writing this farewell so late.  I came down with a fever on Thursday afternoon, and it has stayed with me until the present time.  At the moment, though, I have a little time free of the fever, and so I have been able to compose this short note.  I hope through it you will sense my feelings for your class, and I hope you will remember that I consider you the brightest and best students I have ever taught; I will always believe in each one of you!