A Little Respect

I have had some excellent professors in my time. First there was Howard Gabbenesch, the Sociology professor who challenged me out of academic torpor and taught me that my best, at least in his class, was somewhere around 102.3 percent. He told me I couldn't do it, and I did it to prove him wrong. That man talked to me for 2 minutes and read my personality like a book -- and at the end of the semester, he shook my hand and told me he had known I could do it all along.
Then there was Kirat Baath. Kirat taught me freshman Biology at USI. I hate science, but the next semester I took Human Genetics because Kirat was teaching it, and I loved Kirat. It is impossible to accurately describe what she did for me. In her office I laughed and cried and learned things about life she never could have taught me using a textbook. She stood up for me when I didn't yet know how to stand up for myself. She took me out to lunch and told me stories about India and going to college in Massachusetts. When I started coming here to PA on vacations, she'd call and check in on me. We lost touch for a few years after I moved away, and then found each other again on facebook earlier this year. It's so nice to be able to connect with her again -- there are some people you never forget.Kirat is one of those people.
Michael Paulus was the first Social Work professor I encountered at LHU. I liked him immediately. He's hilarious. Buff the Lecture-Enhancing Bison, a little beanie animal that always went flying around the room during lectures to "encourage participation," was only one of his many good ideas. (Even after Buff took an accidental bath in Dr. P's coffee one morning and smelled like dry roast for the rest of the semester, we used him.) We had mid-semester celebrations complete with Earth, Wind and Fire and Dr. P. dancing the Shopping Cart at the front of the room. No topic was off limits: he'd discuss the perils of "burning a ring on your ass sitting on the pity pot," the viscosity of bowel movements, the nuances of sexual attraction among the extremely aged. He was also way too fond of traumatizing us all by painting very vivid pictures of our parents "getting it on." (He taught Human Behavior and the Social Environment, so this was valid subject material. He just liked it a little too much because it made us all squirm.) Dr. P certainly kept us busy -- his favorite line? "Welcome to your major." -- but he was always available to help, and still is. Though I have finished with the classes he officially teaches, if I need help understanding another assignment I often go straight to Dr. Paulus. Every Social Work major does, because Paulus is like ClearChannel radio: nothing bars the communication. He considers it his job to help us become the best social workers we can be, and if that means he has to explain another professor's assignment a thousand different times in a thousand different ways, he'll do it. He's cool like that -- even in his suspenders and his fishing vest.
But I have to admit it: even Paulus is not *technically* my favorite. That honor belongs to Wade Siebert. If there was a Most Awesome Educator Ever award, I'd hand it to Wade. He's one of those down-to-earth professors who levels with and actively respects all of his students, to the point where he reminds us daily that he respects us because he doesn't think we hear it often enough anywhere else in the university environment. He's on a first-name basis with everyone who's comfortable calling him by his first name -- and he's officially changed his name something like four times because he just gets tired of  hearing the same thing every day. He volunteers with cancer patients and shaves his head out of solidarity with them. He'll teach us things from the book and then supplement the lecture with things the text won't say, like what to do if a client waves a gun at you, how to handle a hoarder, what to do about a terminal client whose dying wish is to get into your pants, etc. He's full of "ethical dilemma" stories and how to resolve them without sacrificing yourself or your profession. He's creative -- he teaches my Aging class, and our first assignment this semester was to draw what we thought we'd look like at 80. He knows his students; he's genuinely interested in what's going on with us and what we dream of doing. If you're a student of his with kids, he knows their names. He's full of questions like, "If you could go anywhere in the world you wanted to go, where would it be? Why?" Wade is also my personal mentor. If I have a problem, I talk to Wade. He has seen me cry, which is a high honor. Wade helps keep me from getting overwhelmed. He advocates for me: he'll wrestle with the Registrar to make sure all my classes are in accessible rooms and fight with the Disability office if they give me trouble about something. He somehow knows things about me I've never had to tell him: he's great at the intuition thing, and he doesn't use it as a power card. He keeps things as equal between us as they can possibly be, and never fails to show me the utmost in respect, for which I pay him in kind. I give Wade my best work because he deserves it. He has offered to take my arm and walk me up the stairs at commencement, and I have accepted without feeling weak or offended. I think it would be an honor to have him help me. He is an excellent social worker: I want to be as good at my job one day as he is at his. I hope I learn to treat people with the same kind of dignity and respect that he does. I do not mind admitting that I look up to him. We all need role models, and Wade is one of mine -- at graduation, he says he's going to turn around and present me to the crowd as an example of what people can do if they truly want to accomplish something. I believe him. And I'm going to throw back my head and laugh and be grateful. And fifteen years from then, I'm going to call Wade from my office somewhere and say, "Thanks for helping me get here." And he'll laugh and be grateful, because that's just Wade.