There are some students, that despite your best efforts you cannot help but love. These are the perpetually tardy, the chronically failing, those of fight clubs and drug deals (I am not embellishing). They are the ones who tell you about their night on the street, the secret tattoo, or their deadbeat boyfriend. Despite all that, despite the fact that your colleagues cannot understand or get along with these children (and neither can you all the time) you miss them when they're not in class because you're wondering where they are, who they're with and what they're doing. You have guesses as to the answers of these, but that's not something you like to think about. Somehow even though you've been told not to expect much, you still do. You still think that if you are the one to give them just one more chance, maybe it will matter.

Yesterday it didn't. Maybe tomorrow it will.