A couple years before my freshman year at Pomona College, David Foster Wallace moved to Claremont, California to teach creative writing to undergrads. Now, four months after I graduated, he’s gone. That I got to be his student during that brief period was an incredible gift.

Dave was hilarious and brilliant and all that, but he was, above all, kind and decent and modest. He insisted we call him "Dave" because he said he felt like a fraud going by "Professor." When my boyfriend asked him for help getting an internship, Dave gave him some contacts to write to. "By the way," Dave told my boyfriend, as if explaining himself, "my writer-name is David Foster Wallace." Was he kidding? Did he really think that we didn’t know who he was? As his students, we were obsessed with him. He taught only twelve of us each semester, and half that many would line up each week for his office hours. We wanted to talk to him about what we were planning on writing, what we’d already written, whether it was okay that we weren’t going to be i-bankers or consultants or law students. “You’re really in a pickle,” he’d say to me, always sincere and compassionate. 

Dave spent the kind of time and care reading undergraduate work that, if you’re familiar at all with "David Foster Wallace, The Writer," might seem like a waste. Take, for instance, the first story I ever wrote: it was six pages long and didn’t make a lick of sense. He wrote a six-page letter of response, which he then edited, annotated, and appended ridiculous-looking smiley-faces to (as he’d do for the next seven pieces I turned in, over the course of three years and three workshops). I know I’m not the only one of his students who saved every draft he wrote on, every letter of response from him, every grammar worksheet that he made us complete.

At the end of our last workshop, on the last day of classes of senior year, Dave told us that he felt privileged to have taught us. He started to choke up, and we all chuckled; we thought that, in the usual "Dave" fashion, he was making fun of himself for getting sentimental. But the thing was, he wasn’t kidding around, and as soon as we realized that, our faces turned to shock. Dave went on, telling us how much he was going to miss us, and crying.

I was sure that we’d always be in touch—whether I’d be frantically emailing him for help with a "major life decision" or sharing with him whatever it was I went on to do. Never could I have understood how much I would have to miss him. The years that I got to share with him: those were truly a privilege.