Buried in the Ivy: A Professor's Odyssey Through a Private Liberal Arts College

THE WELL BRED

My mother, an Englishwoman, always judged a person by how well bred they were. This was based on her observations of their social behavior in a myriad of situations. I always thought the term was strange since it implied one was born to good social behavior, rather than having learned it once you were born. But that’s not what she meant by the term at all. Well bred to her meant how well your parents had taught you along with your level of acculturation and polite manners.

Her definition of well bred was how I came to describe Park College students overall if anyone would ask.

During my very first month of teaching at Park, my mother’s strange term proved useful. In some delirious moment of deciding what would be effective teaching, I had foolishly built into the course syllabus for General Psychology 101 an assigned written book review. Specifically, the student could apply what they had learned in the course in reviewing their choice of any one of five psychologically-themed books, e.g., Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, 1984, Walden II, and one other I can’t remember. To help them out, and to get to know this first batch of freshmen students better, I had also scheduled discussion groups for each book on sequential Friday nights at my campus apartment, Brave New World on the first Friday night, Walden II on the second Friday night, etc. My wife would bake cookies and serve coffee (yes, most students drank coffee then!) to take the edge off the obligation. [Strange as it may sound today, not one student objected to being asked to attend a class function out of class hours, especially in an evening hour, perhaps because then they had class six days a week, including Saturday mornings.]

Not one student failed to show up, much to my amazement. Each group was made up of whoever chose that particular book, but the groups ranged from 10 to 15 each in that the total class was around 50 or so. It monopolized every Friday night for my wife and me and it was a strain to fit all these people into a tiny on-campus apartment no bigger than 500 square feet, consisting of a living room, two small bedrooms connected by a minuscule bath in between and a galley-like kitchen crowded with even one in it. The fact we had moved more furniture than the apartment could reasonably accommodate made for lots of seating but little space to walk. In addition, we had to utilize 10 folding chairs to accommodate all who came which meant to serve coffee we were stepping over people.

Nevertheless, the discussions went well, the students took notes presumably helpful in their written reviews due later, my wife enjoyed meeting Park students for the first time, and I enjoyed talking to the students in my own surrounds in casual dress and outside the formality of a classroom. Often, the discussions would stray to concerns way beyond the required book review and it was interesting to see just what the angst of freshman students was at Park.

But, my wife was in the first trimester of her first pregnancy, and, one Friday night, suddenly disappeared just at the crucial time to serve the cookies and coffee at the conclusion of the discussion. Alarmed, I excused myself and found her really sick bent over the toilet in the tiny bathroom retching her heart out in a strange case of indigestion. Since she was never sick, I helped her freshen up a bit and then got her into bed, a mere two or three feet from the group of students in the next room. By the time I was able to rejoin the students, I emerged into a room completely cleaned, all the folding chairs put back in storage, the floor swept, and, as my eyes glanced into the kitchen, every dish put back in the cupboards, the coffee pot scrubbed and put up, and the sink spotless.

Brian, a muscular young freshman boy, was the only student left, putting the vacuum sweeper back in the closet, having finished with the rug.

The others told me to thank you before they left, Brian said brightly. And they hoped your wife gets feeling better.

How did you know she was sick? I asked.

Well, he blushed. We all overheard her barfing in the john, Dr. Rawson, and I guess. … Well, we just all thought she was sick.

And you cleaned all this up? I asked in wonderment.

Well, not really. It was me and some of the others.. You know, Melinda, Peg, Jake, and John.. Well, now that I think about it… I guess everyone pitched in. Didn’t take long… wasn’t much to it, Dr. Rawson.

But.. why? I asked, used to the corporate world I had come from.

Why not? Brian laughed. You can’t expect her to clean up when she’s sick, Dr. Rawson, he lectured.

Well, I could have cleaned up, I explained. I didn’t expect you to have to do it.

That’s O.K., he dismissed me. You know, this discussion thing is sure going to help me out writing that darn required paper of yours, he added cheerfully. Thanks for having us. With that, and a big smile, he was gone.

That was my real introduction to Park College students. They were exactly what my mother had been talking about when she used the term ‘well bred.’ Indeed they were and many, many experiences over the next 32 years proved that was true of almost all of them. These were people who saw what needed to be done and just did it - not expecting to be thanked and grateful for the opportunity to be of some help now and then.

I quickly learned to respect the students for being just what they were - well bred. The student that night proved over and over the stuff he was made of. Over the next four years I watched him remain alert, helpful without being obsequious, and expecting nothing in return. He was a good student, well liked by his peers, and had a delightful sense of humor. He went on to graduate school in psychology and ended up running a whole school for children of special need which gained national acclaim. I could see why - he was ‘well bred.’

That incidence taught me not only respect for students, but also changed permanently my perception of Park students. These were people who could help me as much as I could help them. These were people I felt comfortable with in sharing my personal life. And, most of all, it taught me out-of-class experiences were as valuable, if not much more so, than in-class experiences if you really want to know your students and what they can teach you.

That view of students and how you get to know them was validated over and over. Usually through out-of-class experiences with students, I got a hint of what their real motivations were, how their family backgrounds had shaped them, and how to most effectively cajole them into doing more academically than they ever thought possible (which made both of us feel worthwhile). I could name hundreds and hundreds of students who taught me how to handle tough issues, how to handle diversity, how to cope with adversity, how to win AND lose gracefully, how to tolerate evil that can’t be changed, and how academia doesn’t always have the answers.

And to think it all started with my wife getting sick and some 18-year-olds cleaning up a mess.

FOLLOWING THE LEAD

OF FRESHMEN

I started college teaching AFTER working in industry. This led to several immediate problems: (1) my pay was less than half what I had earned in the corporate world; (2) I didn’t have the vaguest idea of what to expect in the new position; and (3) my idealized version of a college professor’s life was a Hollywood fantasy. Now, a lifetime later, I know that the corporate world’s view of the academic life is just as distorted.

Prior to being a professor myself, I had envisioned myself leisurely smoking a favorite pipe as I counseled students and shaped lives with no time constraints whatsoever. In my large, well-furnished office, the fireplace would be crackling, soft music would be floating in from a nearby college orchestra, and tea would mysteriously be served by someone or other after the first hour or so of the thoughtful, but pleasant, discussion on the meaning of life with an eager, intellectually starving young mind, in waiting all these years for someone just like me. Further down the road, first sons would be named after me; alumni would sing my praises long after I was dead and by now a campus legend; and material well-being would be assured by a kindly, benevolent board of trustees who would take care of my material needs to the grave. It was based on a Ronald Coleman film where the English-accented distinguished looking professor at a small liberal arts college was presented just that way. (Think of the movie Goodbye, Mr. Chips for a similar view.)

The corporate world still views professors something like this in that they think of them as pampered, sheltered from reality, recklessly liberal, and rarely experiencing anything resembling hard work or time pressures, let alone anxiety. They also view them as pathetically poor for the main part, but it’s just as well. Most professors in their eyes are so out of it they are inherently poor money managers anyway, so what the hell. (Think of the movie Dr. Strangelove for a perfect example of the corporate view.)

I arrived at Park with way too much furniture for the tiny on-campus apartment the college provided at low rent. I had two fairly new cars (one a very finny Cadillac) instead of the usual graduate student special most arrived in. My interview suit was identical to the President’s. I looked more like the college student’s parents dolled up for Parent’s Day than I did other faculty. In other words, I stuck out like a sore thumb.

My first shock was the physical layout of the campus. Facing the Ohio River with a magnificent view was the President’s House, a copy of the same at the University of Virginia I was told. Next to that was the Chapel. Arranged around the sides and back were the classroom and auditorium buildings (Classic Hall, Wales Hall, Firestone Hall, Belski Library) separated by well landscaped grounds. Next were the men and women dorms, along with a number of sorority and fraternity houses. All of these exactly matched each other in Georgian Colonial brick and copper roofs. Much further back and down a narrow lane called Faculty Row were the cheaply built faculty houses and apartment buildings. The campus was beautiful (one of the 10 most beautiful in the United States I was told) in that everything matched and the landscaping was superb. But, having visited many southern plantations, the similarity of Park’s campus master plan to the standard design for any antebellum plantation was startling: the Master’s huge mansion facing the river, the master’s family chapel next door to the mansion, the work barns close by, and, some distance away, the slave cabins with no view of the river whatsoever. Since my apartment was the last in the line, I felt considerable distance in the grand scheme of things.

My second shock was the reaction to the fact my wife had accepted a job as an elementary teacher in the local school since that’s what she did for a career. It turned out only five faculty wives worked at that time and they were viewed as restless by some administrators who obviously thought women’s place was in the home, even in the early 1960s.

My third shock was my office in Firestone Hall. You had to walk through a heavily used classroom to get to it (which meant I had to time my restroom activities between classes). It was furnished with a war surplus desk painted khaki still stenciled Property of Camp Atterbury; a broken secretary swivel chair which tilted badly to one side when I put my weight on it; no phone (there was one phone for all of Firestone Hall in those days); no typewriter; no desk light; and no place for a student to sit, no screens on the window, and no fan for the stifling heat. We were a long way from the corporate world, even for the times.

The fourth shock was when my colleague, Dr. Benson, delivered the psychology laboratory equipment to my office (he was in another building). It was all in a small cardboard box and consisted of some Rorschach cards, a stereoscope to demonstrate depth perception, a deck of ESP cards, two tuning forks (for what I never did figure out), and a prism (to show the spectrum of colors in sunlight). Dr. Benson explained we would have to figure out a way to share between the two buildings since he needed some of the equipment for demonstrations during his lectures. I had been hired as the second psychologist on the Park campus (Dr. Benson had been the first since he established psychology with his arrival in 1937). My task was to expand the curriculum as an experimental psychologist. Obviously, moving from this lonely little box to a number of research-oriented courses was going to take some ingenuity. I was in the same building as Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Geology and it seemed to me they weren’t too much better off, although they had considerably more space and had certainly been around a lot longer to accumulate some teaching equipment over the years.

My fifth shock was the shabbiness of the town of Park. To get a phone in our apartment, we were put on a waiting list with no promise of when phone service might actually occur. When a new washer was delivered to the basement underneath my apartment, I was startled to find a strange man examining it just minutes after it had been delivered by a local merchant. The man explained he was a language professor and the door was open so he wanted to see what I had paid for it. The electricity seemed to go out with every rain. The neighbor’s dog, named Savage promptly attacked our little rat terrier and tore it to shreds. The paint on the apartment house was fresh on the front facing the street and peeling everywhere else. The apartment, which had been described on the phone as to our liking by the man in charge was painted in four different shades of glossy avocado, had roofing nails cracking the walls where pictures had been hung, rags stuffed into the ill-fitting windows to cut down on the drafts, and a cock-roach infested bathroom when we moved in.

My wife never once suggested packing up and moving back to where we had come from, but I marveled that she didn’t. Dr. Benson, my colleague, was a delight and helped me patch up the holes in the wall, paint the sordid apartment all white, and get rid of the cockroaches. A trip to the local furniture store led to a new office chair for me, a desk lamp, and even a chair for a student to sit in. The badly wounded dog was sent to live in a more peaceful environment with my wife’s parents, and my office was even fitted with a screen on the window and a fan from home to stir up some air. Life was looking up!

Within days the entering students arrived for freshman orientation, complete with the required beanie hats, ballerina skirts on the girls, and argyle socks on the men, de rigueur for the stylish at that time. Each and every one had huge smiles on their faces and respectfully addressed me as Dr. Rawson, a whole new experience up until then.

It wasn’t long before I forgot everything about the lack of a phone, paint colors that didn’t match, and an office with limited timed access. The students had made their choice and were sticking with it. So had I. The college had seduced both of us for a lifetime!

My corporate view of the idyllic life of a college professor was quickly dashed. I immediately found I had to work harder than I ever had in the corporate world. The production of lecture notes was the first crisis - they were consumed as fast as I could produce them. I had never taught anything before, let alone topics I had no background in, like human development. Organizing a course to be challenging but not overwhelming was an art, not a science. Fitting material into the 14-week course limitation, taking into account each course then had to be one-third of a student’s total course load, took some finessing. Finding time to meet my colleagues in other departments and to learn how the college actually worked was difficult. Teaching courses of 40 (Human Development) and 60 (Introduction to Psychology) meant lectures and multiple choice tests were the most viable format, not the happy little small-group discussions and essay or oral exams I had experienced in the small liberal arts college I had attended as an undergraduate. Coping with the needs of over 150 students each term was more like being an overworked social worker than Mr. Chips. But all around me, other professors were doing just that, so I didn’t dare complain. Dr. Benson’s load was just as heavy as mine and he had cheerfully existed since 1937.

By the end of the first term, I had survived, loved