George Saunders

I was a really bad student.

I didn't study at all.

And the grades reflected it.

And I didn't really I wasn't really planning to go to college.

But I had this high school teacher, two of them, Joe and Sherry Limbaum, who kind of.

saw something in me and were encouraging me to try to go to college.

So as part of this process, Joe, who was a geology teacher, invited me to this Chicago citywide science fair, which I had nothing to do.

I had no entry at all.

So we go, and it's just amazing.

These kids my age were, I don't know, building nuclear reactors.

I mean, they were doing amazing things.

And I – we walked through there and I was so – I really loved him and idolized him.

And I was kind of feeling a little bit like, oh, God, look at – why is he with me?

I'm such a – you know, I haven't done anything.

These kids are years beyond me, you know.

I haven't even tried.

And –

The beautiful thing that he did for me is we spent that two or three hours together, and he never once in the slightest way intimated that I was less than those kids.

We had just gone, and what he did was he praised the individual, and he explained why this was a particularly good project, and he said to the kids what a great job they'd done.

So he knew that I was internalizing all of this.