Editor's Note: This article was selected as the winning entry in the Mentor's seventh annual Academic Advising Writing Competition. Evelyn Beck, the author of the entry, will receive a $500 cash award.
My Most Memorable Advisee: A Model of Persistence
With rocks glued to her clothing, fake blood smeared on her face, and an incongruous kerchief tied around her short red hair, Teresa attended our last class together as the protagonist in Shirley Jackson's macabre short story “The Lottery.” Poor Tessie Hutchinson, doomed to be stoned to death by the people of her town in a cold-blooded annual ritual just as she had ganged up on the unlucky lottery “winners” who preceded her. Teresa's choice for our final assignment—to dress as a favorite character—was, like the most bewitching of Halloween costumes, deliciously ironic; she'd picked someone totally devoid of her own best qualities. Unlike the similarly named Tessie, a keen intellect, maternal warmth, and unwavering integrity emanate from Teresa like the cloud of dust surrounding the Peanuts character Pigpen.
In my own getup—blue bathrobe and slippers, a pillow stuffed underneath to emulate the pregnancy of the depressed daughter in J. M. Coetzee's novel Disgrace—I snapped everyone's photo to post on our class website. I felt that familiar mix of sadness and relief at semester's end. I'd have been particularly melancholy if I wouldn't be seeing more of Teresa, whose passion for learning had reignited my enthusiasm for teaching. Luckily, I was also her adviser.
In that role, I spent many hours with Teresa in my office over two years, helping her to mull career options, plot the course work needed for transfer, and research financial aid. She'd pop in between classes, elated at an “A” on a biology test, shaking her head at the liberal leanings of her history professor, giggling until her face flushed at a racy joke told by a classmate who'd become her best friend. In her early forties, Teresa was only a little younger than I, and we both had a mule-headed twenty-something daughter and a smart teenage son weighing college options. But we were political opposites, and I was deep into the professional teaching career that she was still debating.
What Teresa most lacked was confidence. At the root of her unsureness was a history of being molested as a young girl. She never relayed details, only hinting at the buried pain. But it had caused her to pack on pounds, a classic method of disguising her sexuality, and the weight had in turn increased her insecurity. No matter that Teresa had a perfect 4.0 average and was selected twice as a recipient of our college's most prestigious scholarships. No matter that I wasn't the only teacher who marveled at her abilities or that my efforts to pump her up were absolutely genuine.
In one sense, I completely understood Teresa's refusal to believe in herself. I do that, too, as a form of self-protection, telling myself that I won't succeed in order to steel myself for rejection that, given the odds, seems likely. Teresa's anxieties were a funhouse mirror of my own. I'd always felt those distortions reflected the real you that usually remained hidden. In Teresa I saw someone just a little less successful than myself in repressing the inner force that avoids risks out of the fear of failure.
I tried my best to squash Teresa's doubts about whether she was too old for a career in the elementary classroom. She had worked in the school system previously and devoted herself to the impoverished children of Mexican migrant workers. Not only had she taught them English, but she made sure they had lunch to eat each day during summer vacation, and she bought them holiday gifts out of her meager earnings—generosity that shamed me into serving meals weekly at the local soup kitchen and becoming a volunteer patient advocate at the hospital. When we both attended a Christmas party at a local home for children who'd been abandoned by their parents, I watched how instantly she bonded with the kids. She belonged in the classroom, no question. As someone who fell haphazardly into teaching as a way to support myself through graduate school, I admired how natural this environment was for Teresa. Recognizing what she so effortlessly bestowed on young people, I put extra effort into lesson plans that had grown stale.
I nominated Teresa for the All-USA Academic Team, a national competition for two-year college students, and refused to accept her excuses that she didn't have time to complete the application and wouldn't win anyway. I can be an incessant nag, especially when my target responds, as she did, penning a moving essay about her work with migrant children. Not surprisingly, she was chosen as one of our college's two nominees.
But then Teresa fell apart. Her husband told her he loved someone else, and she spent the Christmas vacation crying in seclusion. She didn't complete a different, additional scholarship application she'd promised to do.
Luckily, after a few listless months, Teresa pulled herself together. She didn't drop out of school, something that I'd seen happen to other promising students over the years. In the spring, she attended a ceremony at the State House for the All-USA Academic Team members in South Carolina, and took home the award as the top student in our state. A short time later she called me at home with the exciting news that she'd won nationally, too!
More successes followed. At our college's Awards Day, Teresa was named the top student in the college, receiving the President's Award. At graduation, the president of the university where she planned to transfer presented her with a scholarship.
Teresa transferred to pursue her bachelor's degree in elementary education. Unfortunately, the path hasn't been smooth. Her son lost his own college scholarship, quit school, and got tangled up with drugs. Immersed in rescuing him from a drug house and then guiding him through therapy and the court system, Teresa withdrew from all her classes one semester. But she didn't give up, and I believe she will reach her goal, albeit belatedly.
Teresa doesn't believe me when I say that her strength empowers me. Perhaps no student recognizes the impact she can have on a mentor. But as each of my children suffered a crisis last year, and as my mother-in-law's dementia worsened and the demands of caring for her grew, I thought of Teresa. With her sensitivity and soft-heartedness in mind, I gave myself permission to crumple. Tears were okay. A temporary withdrawal from life didn't signal defeat.
And then, like Teresa, I got on with things.
Teresa and I still keep in touch through periodic phone calls and e-mails, and every once in a while we get together for lunch. The last time we met, in a local restaurant, our waiter was another one of my advisees. When he mentioned how anxiety about the transfer process was interfering with his medical school dreams, I started to respond. But then I stopped to gaze across the table, where Teresa was poised to dispense some of her hard-won insights. So I sat back, sipped my water, and listened.