Of all the classes Corinne L (@chemwithcorinne) has taught, one stands out for sending a “wave of goodness” across the internet. The catalyst was her missing calculator. Someone had taken it, and she was devastated. Unable to afford a new one, she turned to her classroom whiteboard and wrote a heartfelt message, also sharing it on TikTok. The response brought tears to her eyes and evoked kindness and empathy from countless people.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | N Voitkevich
Corinne teaches chemistry. One day, she discovered her calculator was missing and wrote a heartbreaking note for her students: "To the person who stole the calculator I've had it since high school: Please return it. Have a friend drop it off or leave it by the door. My kids need new jackets and shoes, and I can't afford to replace the calculator. Thank you, Mrs. L."
Representative Image Source: Pexels | This Is Engineering
Moved by her situation, TikTokers plunged in for support. They offered to send money for jackets, and a new calculator. Others offered to give her their own calculators. @solojeno commented, “Do you have an Amazon wishlist for your classroom? I want to help.”
Image Source: TikTok | @deelasol
Several others were shocked to hear that the teachers in the US were so underpaid. “The fact that as a high school teacher, you can't afford to buy both a calculator and things your children need. Our educational system is failing teachers,” commented @tbird4114. According to Forbes, teachers in America are paid only 76% of the average salary earned by similarly educated professionals. On top of it, many teachers use their own money to purchase basic school supplies like paper, pencils, glue, books, chart papers, folders, etc.
But in Mrs. L’s case, her lost calculator actually paved the way for a good ending. “There is a good ending to this story, stay tuned,” she wrote in the video caption. Sometime after posting the video, the teacher left an update on it, writing, “Still don’t know who took the calculator, but I’ve been overwhelmed by my students’ responses to this.” Later, she posted a detailed video on the update. “I don’t have the calculator, I don’t know who took it, but I have to say I have been so overwhelmed by the responses,” she said in it.
She said the response to her appeal had been amazing. She added that although she really appreciated all the love she was getting, she couldn’t accept the gifts. She was going to resign from her teaching job, and as a stay-at-home mom, she was not going to need calculators anymore. Instead, she appealed to her followers to donate their calculators to their local high school. “We always need calculators. And I promise it will go to good use,” she said. After updating viewers on the calculator, she revealed that she had found a mysterious package someone left in her classroom. The package contained “two brand new jackets in the right sizes for her kids.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Roman P
She thanked the anonymous person for the gift. In the end, although the mystery of the missing calculator wasn’t solved, she said she appreciated the overwhelming response her video had prompted. “Proof that there are 1000s of good people to make up for the bad,” Mrs. L wrote in the video caption.
You can follow Mrs. L on TikTok and Instagram for chemistry tutorials, vlogs, and teaching-related videos.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.