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Today is the birthday of someone not on my friends list, but certainly a friend.
When I first saw her, I was a university freshman and she was a young professor of Russian, a subject I wasn't taking. I was enrolled in a German class in the same room after her class. I saw her quite frequently, but never gave much thought about it. I had thoughts about taking her subject, but according to my plan of the moment that would be a couple years down the road. Whoever was teaching that course till I got to it would scarcely matter.
But strange things can happen.
Since graduate school looked an attractive future, I started getting a little concerned with my grade point average. My chosen major was Psychology. While I wasn't then deep enough into it to become disillusioned with it then, I wasn't getting top grades. (It would have been nice if I'd known that was a sign I really wasn't interested enough in what Psychology had to offer.) Expecting my Psychology grades would improve over time, I decided it would be a good idea to raise my over all grade point average. I was doing great in German. I'd planned to take two years' worth and then take Russian as my second language for grad school. But it suddenly occurred to me that I could take the second year of German at the same time as the first year of Russian. Not only would I be done with two years of Russian sooner I'd most likely have a nice boost to my GPA.
It worked, all too well, thanks to my professor. German was fine to study, but I there was never a point at which I didn't feel like two years was plenty and then I'd move on to other things. But starting with the first term of my sophomore year, Russian quickly became an obsession, and that's what you really need to seriously consider getting into a PhD program.
My professor wasn't just a beautiful little woman. She was a BEAUTIFUL person. Beauty may be skin deep with many, but not her. Brilliant, kind, generous, thoughtful, passionate about her subject, passionate about getting others interested in her subject.
That's not to say she was a success with every student she ever had. No teacher can make everybody who stumbles into the class love it. I remember this professor asking each of us in class late in the first term, why we'd taken Russian. I remember one guy honestly answered that it was because he had to take some language and the lines for French classes and Spanish classes were really long at regular registration, and the line for Russian was short. I don't remember if I told her then that I'd taken Russian to raise my GPA, but I'm sure I did at some point in the years that followed. Sounds very presumptuous, but hey, it worked.
She was the best professor I ever had, the best teacher I ever had, and I'm proud to say we became good friends as well. I worked hard for her classes, because I enjoyed it, I was getting a lot out of it and because since she was becoming a friend I felt I owed it to her as much as to myself. I became the class shill after a term or two. I stopped raising my hand in class, she needed to work with the others more than me and we both knew it. If she had a question for the class no one else wanted to answer, all she had to do was glance toward me. If I was looking at her, and I almost always was, all she had to do was nod in my direction and I'd answer, whether it was a question about the Russian language or later about Russian literature. I had a student like that of my own later, and truly appreciated it.
She was genuinely concerned about what I was learning, knowing full well I wasn't a Russian major. Outside of class a bunch of Russian students would get together with her and talk in Russian about everything. She talked her coworker into doing the same. Frankly the other woman who was still just an instructor was a holy terror in class, a good teacher but so demanding, impatient and frankly so scary she could twist up anyone's stomach. Meeting that woman out of class was dramatically different. Out of class she seemed to have a much better handle on just how hard she should push to get results without scaring people off. Hearing the two of them talking together in Russian several times a week was fun and it served me well when I had to take my grad school Russian examination in the Slavic Department. If I'd had the second woman my first term in Russian, I doubt I'd have learned how good either were at teaching at their best.
It's difficult to express how good my first Russian professor was at least for me. She changed my life, she helped mold how I think in ways I would never have supposed possible at the age of 17 when I first saw her. To me she'll always be a vibrant young woman, though today she's past 70.
Happy Birthday Dr. B. and thanks for everything.
When I first saw her, I was a university freshman and she was a young professor of Russian, a subject I wasn't taking. I was enrolled in a German class in the same room after her class. I saw her quite frequently, but never gave much thought about it. I had thoughts about taking her subject, but according to my plan of the moment that would be a couple years down the road. Whoever was teaching that course till I got to it would scarcely matter.
But strange things can happen.
Since graduate school looked an attractive future, I started getting a little concerned with my grade point average. My chosen major was Psychology. While I wasn't then deep enough into it to become disillusioned with it then, I wasn't getting top grades. (It would have been nice if I'd known that was a sign I really wasn't interested enough in what Psychology had to offer.) Expecting my Psychology grades would improve over time, I decided it would be a good idea to raise my over all grade point average. I was doing great in German. I'd planned to take two years' worth and then take Russian as my second language for grad school. But it suddenly occurred to me that I could take the second year of German at the same time as the first year of Russian. Not only would I be done with two years of Russian sooner I'd most likely have a nice boost to my GPA.
It worked, all too well, thanks to my professor. German was fine to study, but I there was never a point at which I didn't feel like two years was plenty and then I'd move on to other things. But starting with the first term of my sophomore year, Russian quickly became an obsession, and that's what you really need to seriously consider getting into a PhD program.
My professor wasn't just a beautiful little woman. She was a BEAUTIFUL person. Beauty may be skin deep with many, but not her. Brilliant, kind, generous, thoughtful, passionate about her subject, passionate about getting others interested in her subject.
That's not to say she was a success with every student she ever had. No teacher can make everybody who stumbles into the class love it. I remember this professor asking each of us in class late in the first term, why we'd taken Russian. I remember one guy honestly answered that it was because he had to take some language and the lines for French classes and Spanish classes were really long at regular registration, and the line for Russian was short. I don't remember if I told her then that I'd taken Russian to raise my GPA, but I'm sure I did at some point in the years that followed. Sounds very presumptuous, but hey, it worked.
She was the best professor I ever had, the best teacher I ever had, and I'm proud to say we became good friends as well. I worked hard for her classes, because I enjoyed it, I was getting a lot out of it and because since she was becoming a friend I felt I owed it to her as much as to myself. I became the class shill after a term or two. I stopped raising my hand in class, she needed to work with the others more than me and we both knew it. If she had a question for the class no one else wanted to answer, all she had to do was glance toward me. If I was looking at her, and I almost always was, all she had to do was nod in my direction and I'd answer, whether it was a question about the Russian language or later about Russian literature. I had a student like that of my own later, and truly appreciated it.
She was genuinely concerned about what I was learning, knowing full well I wasn't a Russian major. Outside of class a bunch of Russian students would get together with her and talk in Russian about everything. She talked her coworker into doing the same. Frankly the other woman who was still just an instructor was a holy terror in class, a good teacher but so demanding, impatient and frankly so scary she could twist up anyone's stomach. Meeting that woman out of class was dramatically different. Out of class she seemed to have a much better handle on just how hard she should push to get results without scaring people off. Hearing the two of them talking together in Russian several times a week was fun and it served me well when I had to take my grad school Russian examination in the Slavic Department. If I'd had the second woman my first term in Russian, I doubt I'd have learned how good either were at teaching at their best.
It's difficult to express how good my first Russian professor was at least for me. She changed my life, she helped mold how I think in ways I would never have supposed possible at the age of 17 when I first saw her. To me she'll always be a vibrant young woman, though today she's past 70.
Happy Birthday Dr. B. and thanks for everything.
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