Jennifer would have caught my attention even if she hadn't stopped to talk that afternoon. The first couple of weeks in my writing class are always a bit unsettling. The students are a blur of unfamiliar faces, most of them freshmen trying to acclimate themselves to their new environment. When Jennifer approached me with a question after the second day, I was grateful for the chance to know at least one name with a face.
Jennifer’s writing wasn't perfect, but her effort was. She worked hard and pushed herself to excel. She was excited to learn, which made me enjoy teaching her. I didn't realize then how much she would also teach me.
One afternoon, Jennifer stopped by after class. She wasn't clarifying homework or asking a question about a paper I'd returned.
"I didn't go to school yesterday," she said quietly. "I was at the health center the whole day." I gave her a sideways look, startled. "I'm fine now," she reassured me with confidence. Then she was gone.
Two nights later, Jennifer's father called to tell me that she would be missing a few classes. She had been hospitalized with meningitis. I heard from him again a few days later, and again after that. Jennifer's condition had worsened, he said, and it appeared she might not finish the semester at all.
Jenny remained hospitalized, ninety miles away from home. Her mother stayed by her side, camped out in the corner of a cramped hospital room, sleeping night after night on a chair.
Her grandparents and long-standing friends all made their pilgrimages to the hospital room. Jenny's condition grew worse, not better. I was terrified when I saw the pale, emaciated girl who had only ten days earlier radiated life and warmth in my classroom. When her grandparents arrived, she announced proudly, in a tiny voice: "This is my college writing teacher." I remembered what her father had said in his first phone call: "School means everything to Jenny."
A week later, Jenny herself called me to tell me she was on the road to recovery. "I'll be back," she insisted. "I have no doubt," I told her, choking back tears. But around the same time, news reports announced the meningitisinduced death of another student at another school. Jenny sank back into her hospital bed.
Then, five weeks later, I walked into my classroom to find Jenny in her seat, smiling as she talked to the students around her. I caught my breath as her thin body approached my desk, and she handed over all of her missed assignments, completed with thought and excellence. The strength of her will to overcome shone out of her pale, weak, eighteen-year-old face. It would be a few more days, though, before I learned the rest of the story.
Jenny's suitemates, Maren and Kate, were just getting up the Sunday morning to see Jenny dragging herself into the bathroom they shared. She had a horrendous headache and had been throwing up all night. Forty-five minutes later, as the two were leaving for church, she was still there. Maren had a bad feeling about Jenny and asked her Sunday school class to pray for her. When they returned to the dorm three hours later, Jenny was still violently ill. Concerned that she was becoming dehydrated, they decided to take her to the emergency room.
The two girls lifted Jenny up and carried her out to the car, then from the car to the hospital. They spent the next seven hours at their friend's side, tracking down her parents, responding to doctors and trying to comfort a very sick eighteen-year-old through myriad medical tests. They left the hospital when Jenny's parents arrived but were back the next morning when the doctors confirmed that the meningitis was bacterial. By noon, they had the whole twohundred-member campus Christian group praying for Jenny.
I credit these two young students with the miracle of Jenny's life. I remember being asked as a college freshman who I considered a hero. I didn't have an answer then. Since that time, I've learned that I may have been looking for heroes in the wrong places. Ask me now who I admire, and I'll tell you about this couple of ordinary college students.
- Jo Wiley Cornell