Finding Anchor

Read this lovely essay about an eccentric professor and her legacy. Not everyone is lucky to have known an educator in the university years that transformed their lives but this goes much beyond that. Young people are not always the best at keeping in touch - not because they don't care but because they are starting out in life and can be busy with too many things that matter to their future to consider looking back at things from the past. Maybe this professor as complicated as her legacy is knew something about helping her students remain anchored to something of value even it was not in their past.

Over potstickers at the Cheesecake Factory or French onion soup at a local bistro, Professor Hassold gossiped with them about rival art professors or recalled adventures with old boyfriends in New York. She expressed dismay over her belief that New College was losing its liberal, countercultural spirit — a shift that would become more pronounced decades later.

Professor Hassold was always digging into her students’ aspirations.

“What do you want to do and how do you get there?” her students remembered her asking. “Who do you like to read? Where do they teach? They teach abroad? How do you save up the money to go?”

These dinners, Dr. Archer recalled, “were these fun spaces where you could imagine a life for yourself without restrictions.”

To have been asked those questions by someone who cares and is wise enough to guide, when one is young and seeking clarity is a precious gift already. But these students got luckier.