One Teacher Can Make A Difference
When I went off to college - a very long time ago - I was woefully unprepared.
I’d like to blame my condition on the public schools I attended, or that I was the first in my family to attend college, but the truth is it was all me.
I was an uninspired, lazy student. Especially after my family moved - over my loud protests - from the small town where I’d grown up to a more urban setting in my junior year.
For the last two years of high school I skated. And it showed.
I decided to be an English major because I liked to read. Trouble was, although I’d consumed every Jacqueline Susann and James Michener novel at the public library, I had no background in actual literature.
After several weeks of struggling in my Survey of English Literature class, I went to my advisor, who also happened to be head of the English department.
He was a rotund little man with a pointy reddish beard. I’d liked him as soon as I met him.
“I’m not college material,” I murmured as I perched uncomfortably on a chair in his cluttered office. “I feel stupid. I’ve never read any Shakespeare. I don’t know who Chaucer is or Proust. Everyone else in class seems to know, but I just sit there.”
He gave me a wry smile and told me to come back the next day.
When I did, he handed me a single-spaced typewritten sheet of paper.
“You’re not stupid, you’re uneducated,” he said, good-naturedly. “Here’s a list of 50 books I think every person should read.
“They’re all on my shelves,” he said with a sweeping gesture at his stuffed bookcases. “I have an open-door policy. Borrow what you want and bring them back when you’re finished.”
I flushed crimson, took a couple of books and thanked him profusely.
And that’s how I spent my freshman year: working my way through his list, from several volumes of Laurence Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy” to Jane Austen to J.D. Salinger.
I began to drop in his office every few days to discuss whatever I was reading. During the summer, between shifts as a waitress in a seafood joint, I finished off the list on a blanket at the Jersey shore. I sent him postcards to let him know I was still at it.
Had it not been for this little professor I would likely have dropped out freshman year and gone to work in my dad’s little real estate business and married a guy named Vinnie.
Instead, I discovered that I wanted to read books that weren’t on the bestseller list. I wanted to be in school. I wanted to be a writer.
I eventually switched majors, had another advisor who was equally smart and engaging, and I didn’t see much more of the little English prof until we shook hands at graduation.
I’d like to tell you I still have that yellowed list he gave me freshman year, but I don’t. Heck, I can’t remember the titles of many of the books that were on it. I’d like to tell you I kept in touch with this professor over the decades - and I meant to - but I didn’t.
Ten years ago the alumni news informed me that J. Thomas Dwyer, PhD. had died. I’d missed my chance to thank him.
When I mentioned my mentor during a lighthearted moment on the radio last week, the phone lines lit up with callers who’d also had teachers who said just the right thing at the right time and changed the trajectory of their lives.
If you had a teacher - or any adult - who made a difference in your life, and he or she is still among the living, you might fire off a note or email of gratitude.
I wish I had.
