My Professor, My Mentor, My Rock

Decades after they met in the classroom, a remarkable teacher counsels her student on one of life’s most difficult lessons.

- Emily Rapp Black 

DURING MY FIRST year in college, I was silent. I never skipped class, and I read every page assigned to me, but I didn’t speak, even though I was in a program called the Great Conversation. I was too afraid of saying something wrong.

I declared a religion major as a sophomore and took a class from Barbara, a young theologian. Although I’d grown up in the Protestant church and was the child of a pastor, I didn’t have a clue what feminist theology was about. But the class fit with my schedule, and I’m so glad it did. My mind was split open by a range of new thinkers and writers and by the quality of Barbara’s questions. I finally had something to say and the energy to say it. I started talking, and then I couldn’t stop. I was a frequent visitor during Barbara’s office hours, a rocket of words. She listened and calmly responded, her peaceful exterior a perfect counterpoint to my manic ramblings. I loved what she saw in me, which was a range of abilities I had never seen in myself.

I spent my junior year in Dublin, and that spring Barbara sent me an e-mail announcing the birth of her daughter, Maggie. I hadn’t stopped to think that my favorite professor had a life of her own that was progressing simultaneously to mine. I quickly typed a note of congratulations and wandered to a nearby coffee shop, feeling strangely weepy. I realized that I loved Barbara for the ways in which she reflected an ideal version of who I wanted to be. But what did I know about her life?