I had a really funny day at work (I've been a foreign-language teacher for almost 24 years). My first semesters took their first test last week, and got it back today. The results weren't bad (slightly above "average"), but one girl said, "OMG!" and burst into tears. Now I've seen that happen before, usually when somebody gets a really bad grade, but this gal got a well-deserved "excellent". Her work in class is very good (she works), so I wasn't at all surprised when she got the best grade in the class. When I asked her why she was crying, she told me that she had never gotten such a good grade, and had been a very mediocre student throughout primary and secondary school. Teaching can be extremely frustrating when you're confronted with "underachievers", but I find it very "comforting" when a "poor" student puts in a lot of effort and achieves great results, i.e., when I can say, "Your hard work has really paid off."