As I promised last week, here's a continuation of my last blogpost on Hope professors who have changed my life. While I can safely say almost all of my professors here have changed my life in some way, I have to narrow it down a little, right?
Here are two more professors who changed my life and my Hope experience:
Jim Allis
Professor Allis was my first-year seminar professor and first advisor at Hope. I took Courage, Wildness, Learning with him, and I highly recommend it. A week before school starts in August, the class goes backpacking for real life experience in Courage and Wildness. My class didn't have the opportunity to go because Professor Allis broke his arm on a previous backpacking trip that summer; however, that did not at all alter my experience for the worse. Quite simply, Professor Allis just knows how to talk, especially to scared freshmen.
I grew so much as a person in his class, and he definitely aided that. We read life-changing books like Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner and Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. We reflected on courageous (or not so courageous) events in our lives and interviewed our friends and family about their courage. I not only became closer to myself, but also people in the class. I am still close friends with a number of people in my FYS, and still occasionally talk to Professor Allis. He never discouraged anything we felt called to write about, and helped us work through everything we did reflect on. Our final project was to create a metaphorical map of our semester in regards to the class, the readings, and our semester's personal events. The class, and his teaching, was life-changing for me, and really jumpstarted my college experience for the better.
Favorite moment with Professor Allis:
As my advisor before I declared my major, Professor Allis had a meeting with me concerning classes and grades. I wasn't doing well in Spanish so he asked when my next test was. "Tomorrow," I said.
"How much have you studied?"
"I haven't." (Did I mention I hadn't really gotten the hang of college yet?)
"I want you to go home and make notecards of everything on your test tomorrow. Email me by 5 PM and tell me that you have done that."
I can't say whether or not I did make my Spanish notecards (I really hope I did), but this was just the beginning of Hope professors genuinely caring about my success (and failure).
Claudia Hayes-Hagar
;)
This summer I lost my favorite professor and greatest advocate at Hope to cancer: Claudia/Mrs. Art (as her elementary students called her). She taught one of my Art Education courses, Elementary Art Education Methods. We had coffee weekly, vented about the education system, chatted about Tai Chi (which I was planning to take with her this semester), and gossiped about everything else. She had the most genuine soul and quirkiest, loving personality. She was truly a light in my life, and everyone's she met.
I encourage everyone to seek out a professor that is inspiring. Take them to coffee, learn about them, and send them a thank you email or note while you still can.
Favorite Moment with Claudia:
Every moment! But, okay... one time when we were at the Kletz for coffee she asked if I wanted anything. "No, I'm good Claudia!" She replied, not content in my answer, "I'm a (bad word)-ing professor, let me buy you coffee!"