This post is dedicated to Emily LaPadura, a great friend and teacher of rhetoric!
Memory is inherently subjective, flawed, and self-serving. The moment something’s over, we start remembering it in a way that serves some purpose, whether we’re aware of it or not. Documents, be they hard-copy or more often now, digital, however, give a more tangible structure to the fiction of memory. I’ve been wanting to write about the three people I call my Holy Trinity of educators, Professors Jeanne Fahnestock, Eugene Hammond, and Robert Gaines, for a while. Perhaps because of the magnitude of my appreciation of all they taught me, though, it was out of reach.
When I began making digital archives of the documents from my undergraduate education, I realized various interactions we’d had as preserved in document form could demonstrate why I value them so much. They specialize in document-based research, too, so it seemed apt for that reason too.
My years of undergraduate study at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP), where I was an English and journalism double major, were my halcyon days. Everything unfolded organically as when a confluence of favorable factors come to ensure that something happens. I didn’t feel like I was making myself do anything, I just did it because I loved it. I started assignments early, went out late, and ate lots of cheesecake just because it’s darn good. But what I was truly eating, as Rose Nylund once said on The Golden Girls, one of my favorite TV shows of all time that I watched every day during that era, was life. It tasted different then as compared to now–simpler. It’s still good, but there’s nothing like the magic imparted by the blush of youth.
Related: I limerick on an Ebersole named Eric!
The three English professors I took the most classes with and who instilled in me whatever skill at writing I have were Professors Fahnestock, Hammond, and Gaines. They’re all experts in rhetorical studies, and that’s the sub-field of the larger ones of English where I found my home as a writer. I call them my Holy Trinity of Rhetoric. Part of what I loved about being a student was how clear it is when you’re doing a good job. It’s not so simple in non-scholastic settings. Of course, figuring out how to judge that for yourself is part of what makes one an adult, and their input led me to be able to do so as a writer.
Once I wrote a paper analyzing a chunk of text for its use of tropes and figures of speech, Professor Fahnestock’s area of expertise. She wrote on it in black ink and error-free, well-spaced cursive at the end: “You chose a passage rich in figurative language. Of course, the student has to have the skill to find and analyze the tropes and schemes, too, even if they’re there.” But she also said I should see when I had done a good job and be as willing as she was to acknowledge it. “You want to strive for perfection,” she wrote, “without necessarily being perfect!”
In Gaines’ case, I cringe every time I use that title-less moniker for him, but I have to call him that since he once told me, “You may not call me Professor Gaines” as we ambled through a vestibule in Jimenez hall together after class. I told Gaines (see–it doesn’t sound right!) of a website a friend and I were starting on soap opera news. Going through my old papers, tucked into a folder with some notes from a graduate course in Renaissance and modern rhetorical theory I found a printout of an email from him. It said: ‘No matter how it feels to you at any moment–you are a shining success. And that’s because you are pursuing your vision.” In a field that can feel like a constant uphill battle for website clicks and page views and ad revenue, his words buoyed me at many points when I felt like calling it a day.
And: Local Democratic politic Carole Fisher teaches me something valuable every time I’m with her.
Another time, I looked up at Professor Hammond with wonder, his arms full of papers as he approached a classroom I was seated outside. After years of struggling to do so, he had finally made me understand poetic rhythm and meter in class two days before. That’s impressive enough. But it was during another course I took with him that prompted him to give me input that’s stayed with me to this day. I wrote a paper about a deeply personal health concern. He was generous with thoughtful praise, sure. But it was a piece of his careful critique that I think of almost every time I’ve composed since then: “As you shift to analysis, your comments are too glib or random. This sections needs shoring up,” for example. It’s not that he doesn’t have a sense of humor, of course. He is, after all, an international expert on one of the greatest humorists in the Western tradition, Jonathan Swift!
Also: See how another great person in my life inspired me.
The Holy Trinity, in perhaps its most generous act of all, has kept in touch with me throughout the 19 years since I graduated from College Park. They don’t have any obligation to do so now, and they’re all quite busy with their personal and professional lives. There have been grandchildren, entire-department administration, moves to different states, and for all of them, continued scholarship. Professor Fahnestock said to me and my mom at a conference in 2011 that professors love when a student is as excited about what they’re teaching as I was in all three cases, and that’s why I got along so well with them. Perhaps, but they’re three unusually nurturing souls too. That’s not a far-flung memory but a present-day reality, so you can take my word for it.
I’m grateful for your readership! Check back with me each week here at politicalpoetrypastiche as my linguistic, literary, and generally loquacious involvement in local politics takes on a mélange of prose and poetry genres. After all: All Politics Is HoCo-al™. Join me on Facebook here, find me on Twitter at @politicalpoetr3, and follow me on Instagram using the handle @politicalpoetrypastiche.