Compassion: When did the compassion of a teacher make a difference in your life?

        It is the day before thanksgiving break begins and I am leaving to go home that night with my older sister.  One of my professors has assigned an essay, I believe it was something like 3 to five pages, and to be honest, I wasn’t completely done reading what it was supposed to be on, but I was very determined to get it done. Because the next morning (the day before thanksgiving) I was scheduled for oral surgery to get all four of my wisdom teeth removed.  But, my professor had said that we could hand the paper in (post it online) as late as the following night, the night of the day I was having my wisdom teeth removed.  So, I ended up not finishing as I had hoped before I left to go home, but I was optimistic that I would be able to finish it before it was due.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  I guess I really underestimated what the effects of having invasive surgery would be, but long story short, I was out of commission for a few days, just trying to recover and just hoping to once again be able to eat solid foods.  Clearly, I had overestimated myself and was feeling very foolish, and not really being sure what to do about the situation, I did what was probably the worst thing I could do: I ignored it for the rest of break.  
So there I was, back from thanksgiving break, sitting in the study lounge of Brandt all night long, typing out this paper in a feeble attempt to somehow salvage whatever might be left of my grade for this class.  Three cans of red bull, and 6 and a half pages later, at the ungodly hour of 6:40 or so in morning I finally finished, with the sun just starting to come up outside. I sent it off to my professor, with an explanation that I can sum up as very, very apologetic, pretty much begging him to please at least read my essay.  I wasn’t feeling too hopeful at this point. My professor emailed me back, with a response that was nothing short of completely astounding, explaining that despite the fact that what I had done was (not quite in these words) very stupid and immature, that he would read it, grade it, and then take of 10% for how wholly unacceptably late it was.  I was astonished.  And entirely grateful.