"I'm so glad we had this chat," I told him, "because I think it's important that I give you some specific information. You are not just in the bottom 25%. Out of 50 students in the class, your peers ranked you dead last. You are number 50. You have a serious issue. They say you're not listening. You're hard to get along with. It's not going well." The student was shocked. They're always shocked. He had had all of these rationalizations, and now here I was, giving him hard data. And then I told him the truth about myself. "I used to be just like you," I said. "I was in denial. But I had a professor who showed he cared about me by smacking the truth into my head. And here's what makes me special: I listened." This student's eyes widened. "I admit it," I told him. "I'm a recovering jerk. And that gives me the moral authority to tell you that you can be a recovering jerk, too." For the rest of the semester, this student kept himself in check. He improved. I'd done him a favor, just as Andy van Dam had done for me years before.