Guilty as charged

"With a few words she can incite an epiphany."

This sentence appeared among the comments on my student evaluations for the spring semester. I'd like to hang it up where I can read it every day as a sort of antidote to the despair that follows more common comments like "Too much reading in this class" (It's a literature class! Reading is what we do!) or "She didn't give me an outline for my paper" (That's because it's your paper and not mine!).

I like to think of myself as an inciter of epiphanies. If someone ever hauls me in front of a judge to plead to the charge of Inciting Epiphanies, I will happily proclaim, "Guilty, guilty, guilty!"--yes, even if the punishment requires teaching literature to students who would not recognize an epiphany if it jumped up and bit them, which, when you think about it, is pretty much what epiphanies do. I would be happy to have the phrase "Inciter of Epiphanies" engraved on my tombstone, although not right away if that's okay--I need to spend a few more years inciting epiphanies before facing that Final Epiphany. From now on, when a student complains that it's just not FAIR to be penalized for missing 12 classes or that her life is so busy there's no WAY she can ignore her cell phone long enough to pay attention to my class, I'll just sigh deeply and flex my epiphany-inciting muscles. When epiphanies start busting out all over, I'll know my work here is done.