When Inspiration Dies:
Goodbye to a Great Teacher
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 3:43pm
I got on Facebook today like any other day, and found it first on one friend's status, then another. The news that Margaret Pepperdene, professor emerita of English at Agnes Scott, has passed to the other side.
She was the most amazing, vibrant and brilliant woman I've ever had the honor of knowing. And I don't say that lightly. When she half-stood, half-sat in the front of the classroom, with one leg thrown over the corner of a desk, with the watch she wore on a chain around her neck in one hand, head tilted back and eyes closed as the words spilled out, you knew you were in the presence of someone extraordinary.
Her love of literature -- of all learning -- was immeasurable, vast, something that leaked from her pores. Sometimes when she spoke, the words bubbled and broke like a mountain stream, as if the thoughts were coming too fast for articulation. She didn't just love literature, she was in love with it, enamored of it; you could imagine her taking it to bed, just like a lover.
It was not a static thing with her, either. People throw around the word "inspiration" for a lot of cliched reasons, but when you listened to her for five minutes, you wanted to run back to your room and read, read, read and then write, write, write. And she had this extraordinary ability to make you believe you could do anything. It was as if your brain cells went snap, crackle and pop, one after the other, from a little time spent in her classroom or office.
When she looked at you, she really looked at you. And you saw yourself through her eyes, as someone talented and smart and capable of extraordinary things. You went to her empty, you left her overflowing.
But even if she hadn't possessed all these talents, she still would have been one of the most enormous influences in my life. Without her, I would not have been at Agnes Scott. And without Agnes Scott, I would be far a different person than I am today.
When I was graduating high school, looking around at my options for college, it seemed inevitable that I would end up at Armstrong State in my hometown of Savannah, GA. Not that I'm knocking that school, you understand. But staying in Savannah, it was highly likely that I would continue hanging out with the same friends I'd known all my life.
And I'm not knocking them, either. But I came out of a very homogenized culture of white, middle-class, Southern Baptists who never seemed to have the same doubts and questions I did. And when I talk to them now, most are pretty much the same as I left them. Again, not a bad thing, but in my heart even then, I wanted to see more, to experience more. I didn't know a single person whose life experience wasn't pretty much the same as mine, whose opinions and beliefs weren't the same as I'd known all my life, so much so that later it would come as a shock that not everyone in the world knew all the words to "Just As I Am" or who Lottie Moon was. We all dressed alike, talked alike, thought alike. If you didn't, you damn sure pretended that you did.
My family didn't have the money to send me away to school. Even Armstrong would have required financial aid. I would have lived at home in the safe, sheltered environment where many parts of me would never have grown up. I was still possessed, then, by an almost pathological and debilitating shyness and fear of the unknown. I wanted to go away to school -- knew I needed to go away to school as much as I was scared to death of it.
I went with friends to a college fair, and one of them pointed at the ASC booth. "That's supposed to be a really good school," she said. "You have to be really smart to even be accepted." Me? I looked at the glossy brochures and saw the unicorns carved on the front of one of the buildings, and thought it was cool. (I was collecting unicorns at the time.... ah, such mindless innocence.)
When time came to take the SATs and they asked where you'd like your scores sent to, I flippantly checked ASC along with Armstrong. Just to see if I were smart enough. Even my high school guidance counselor merely said, "You know that's a really expensive school. You should have a backup plan... But if you do go, send me a mug, will you?"
Turns out I was smart enough. But when they contacted me about the Honor Scholarship, I was floored.
I knew my parents couldn't afford it, but they let me attend the special weekend for potential Honor Scholars anyway. I was terrified to be among so many strangers, and I still regret the way I hid when I could, the opportunities I didn't make the most of.
Still, the weekend was amazing, and not just because the college did their best to dazzle us. ASC was small enough, friendly enough... cozy enough.... I saw that I would not get lost as a nameless face on some huge impersonal campus. I began to believe I could do it. I could leave home for the first time.
And the classes! Oh, my, we sat in on one of Dr. Nelson's classes, where they were discussing a poem, "Margaret, are you grieving, over golden groves unleaving..." I realized that I'd never been taught as these girls were being taught. I had never learned anything before, not like that. It was water to a sponge, and I wanted it.
Then we met with Dr. Pepperdene. She told us how in learning about literature, you learn about yourself. If Nelson had been water to my thirsty brain, she was gasoline and the match to my tinder soul. She simply... radiated -- not just knowledge, but genuine warmth.
And I was grateful for that warmth even more when I got to the interview. I don't even remember who else was in that room. Only that she made me feel as if she was utterly delighted to see me there. She asked me about the essay I'd written, for which I'd chosen the topic "What historical figure would you most like to talk to and why?"
I'd chosen Judas Iscariot. Namely because I'd been struggling with the stickier issues of my Southern Baptist indoctrination, and the whole concept of poor Judas having to betray Christ versus the issues of free will. The circular reasoning drove me nuts, and I'd been reading all kinds of stuff on Judas trying to wrap my head around it.
I know I babbled incoherently, and mentioned how I often got caught up in a subject that interested me. Which at that time included not just Judas Iscariot but vampires.
Yes, I know. I was young. But I didn't just mean Hammer movies with Christopher Lee; I meant reading a minutely annotated edition of Stoker's original, and other scholarly tomes on various legends and possible origins. I think the others on the panel looked a little askance at each other when I said this, and I wanted to crawl under a rock as soon as I saw the look on their faces and realized what I had said.
But not Dr. Pepperdene. She just beamed at me. She saw only a brain desperate for knowledge. Someone who wanted to know the whys and hows and to understand.... everything.
I got the Honor Scholarship. It wasn't much, really, but enough to get me in the door. I met people and learned things that would change me in ways I never dreamt possible. I became an artist and a writer there, and the independent, open-minded, braver and eternally questioning soul that I am today. I was born at Agnes Scott, and Margaret Pepperdene was either my fairy godmother or my midwife, I'm not sure which.
At some point, my faculty advisor left the school, and Dr. Pepperdene generously agreed to become my advisor, though I know she had more students than she could handle already. Everybody wanted her as an advisor, after all.
I would go to her in my lowest moments. When personal issues arose, when stress had me by the throat, when I didn't believe there was any way I could pass this test or write that paper, she was there. And I always left her believing that I could.
In my senior year, my father had filed bankruptcy without bothering to tell me. I didn't find out until I went to register for classes and found out my tuition had not been paid. I scrambled and got an emergency last minute student loan to pay for fall, but I had no idea how'd I pay for the rest. I was suddenly-- completely -- on my own, and couldn't even afford to buy my books.
When winter quarter started and I still had no idea what to do, and the registrar started again with warnings that I would have to leave, I went to Pepperdene's office and dissolved in hysterical tears.
She gave me a kleenex and told me that I would get through this, that I was too good not to get through it. She told me that she still remembered my enthusiasm and eagerness from the first meeting -- even Judas and Bram Stoker! -- and that she had fought for me then because she knew ASC was where I belonged.
She didn't make me any promises. It was only when I was called to the Dean's office that I found out she'd gone to administration, explained my situation, and got them to agree to making me a private loan to let me finish the year and graduate.
For several years, I sent her a Christmas card and got one in return. But then one year, the card didn't come. This was after her retirement, and I think she was trotting all over the country -- if not the world -- in her eternal quest for learning. I kept thinking that I would track her down some day.
When my first book was published, I sent her a copy through the school. I don't know if she got it or not. I hope she did. I hope she saw my grateful acknowledgment of her impact on my life as a person and a writer. I hope she knows she is one of the reasons I try, and have never stopped trying.
I hope she knows, even now, that I am so very grateful I had the pleasure and privilege of sitting in her classroom. That so much of the best of me was nurtured by her extraordinary gifts.
And now if you'll excuse me, I am going to read a little Chaucer -- if i can stop sniffling long enough -- and light a candle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffNH8yF6veY
Goodbye to a Great Teacher
Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 3:43pm
I got on Facebook today like any other day, and found it first on one friend's status, then another. The news that Margaret Pepperdene, professor emerita of English at Agnes Scott, has passed to the other side.
She was the most amazing, vibrant and brilliant woman I've ever had the honor of knowing. And I don't say that lightly. When she half-stood, half-sat in the front of the classroom, with one leg thrown over the corner of a desk, with the watch she wore on a chain around her neck in one hand, head tilted back and eyes closed as the words spilled out, you knew you were in the presence of someone extraordinary.
Her love of literature -- of all learning -- was immeasurable, vast, something that leaked from her pores. Sometimes when she spoke, the words bubbled and broke like a mountain stream, as if the thoughts were coming too fast for articulation. She didn't just love literature, she was in love with it, enamored of it; you could imagine her taking it to bed, just like a lover.
It was not a static thing with her, either. People throw around the word "inspiration" for a lot of cliched reasons, but when you listened to her for five minutes, you wanted to run back to your room and read, read, read and then write, write, write. And she had this extraordinary ability to make you believe you could do anything. It was as if your brain cells went snap, crackle and pop, one after the other, from a little time spent in her classroom or office.
When she looked at you, she really looked at you. And you saw yourself through her eyes, as someone talented and smart and capable of extraordinary things. You went to her empty, you left her overflowing.
But even if she hadn't possessed all these talents, she still would have been one of the most enormous influences in my life. Without her, I would not have been at Agnes Scott. And without Agnes Scott, I would be far a different person than I am today.
When I was graduating high school, looking around at my options for college, it seemed inevitable that I would end up at Armstrong State in my hometown of Savannah, GA. Not that I'm knocking that school, you understand. But staying in Savannah, it was highly likely that I would continue hanging out with the same friends I'd known all my life.
And I'm not knocking them, either. But I came out of a very homogenized culture of white, middle-class, Southern Baptists who never seemed to have the same doubts and questions I did. And when I talk to them now, most are pretty much the same as I left them. Again, not a bad thing, but in my heart even then, I wanted to see more, to experience more. I didn't know a single person whose life experience wasn't pretty much the same as mine, whose opinions and beliefs weren't the same as I'd known all my life, so much so that later it would come as a shock that not everyone in the world knew all the words to "Just As I Am" or who Lottie Moon was. We all dressed alike, talked alike, thought alike. If you didn't, you damn sure pretended that you did.
My family didn't have the money to send me away to school. Even Armstrong would have required financial aid. I would have lived at home in the safe, sheltered environment where many parts of me would never have grown up. I was still possessed, then, by an almost pathological and debilitating shyness and fear of the unknown. I wanted to go away to school -- knew I needed to go away to school as much as I was scared to death of it.
I went with friends to a college fair, and one of them pointed at the ASC booth. "That's supposed to be a really good school," she said. "You have to be really smart to even be accepted." Me? I looked at the glossy brochures and saw the unicorns carved on the front of one of the buildings, and thought it was cool. (I was collecting unicorns at the time.... ah, such mindless innocence.)
When time came to take the SATs and they asked where you'd like your scores sent to, I flippantly checked ASC along with Armstrong. Just to see if I were smart enough. Even my high school guidance counselor merely said, "You know that's a really expensive school. You should have a backup plan... But if you do go, send me a mug, will you?"
Turns out I was smart enough. But when they contacted me about the Honor Scholarship, I was floored.
I knew my parents couldn't afford it, but they let me attend the special weekend for potential Honor Scholars anyway. I was terrified to be among so many strangers, and I still regret the way I hid when I could, the opportunities I didn't make the most of.
Still, the weekend was amazing, and not just because the college did their best to dazzle us. ASC was small enough, friendly enough... cozy enough.... I saw that I would not get lost as a nameless face on some huge impersonal campus. I began to believe I could do it. I could leave home for the first time.
And the classes! Oh, my, we sat in on one of Dr. Nelson's classes, where they were discussing a poem, "Margaret, are you grieving, over golden groves unleaving..." I realized that I'd never been taught as these girls were being taught. I had never learned anything before, not like that. It was water to a sponge, and I wanted it.
Then we met with Dr. Pepperdene. She told us how in learning about literature, you learn about yourself. If Nelson had been water to my thirsty brain, she was gasoline and the match to my tinder soul. She simply... radiated -- not just knowledge, but genuine warmth.
And I was grateful for that warmth even more when I got to the interview. I don't even remember who else was in that room. Only that she made me feel as if she was utterly delighted to see me there. She asked me about the essay I'd written, for which I'd chosen the topic "What historical figure would you most like to talk to and why?"
I'd chosen Judas Iscariot. Namely because I'd been struggling with the stickier issues of my Southern Baptist indoctrination, and the whole concept of poor Judas having to betray Christ versus the issues of free will. The circular reasoning drove me nuts, and I'd been reading all kinds of stuff on Judas trying to wrap my head around it.
I know I babbled incoherently, and mentioned how I often got caught up in a subject that interested me. Which at that time included not just Judas Iscariot but vampires.
Yes, I know. I was young. But I didn't just mean Hammer movies with Christopher Lee; I meant reading a minutely annotated edition of Stoker's original, and other scholarly tomes on various legends and possible origins. I think the others on the panel looked a little askance at each other when I said this, and I wanted to crawl under a rock as soon as I saw the look on their faces and realized what I had said.
But not Dr. Pepperdene. She just beamed at me. She saw only a brain desperate for knowledge. Someone who wanted to know the whys and hows and to understand.... everything.
I got the Honor Scholarship. It wasn't much, really, but enough to get me in the door. I met people and learned things that would change me in ways I never dreamt possible. I became an artist and a writer there, and the independent, open-minded, braver and eternally questioning soul that I am today. I was born at Agnes Scott, and Margaret Pepperdene was either my fairy godmother or my midwife, I'm not sure which.
At some point, my faculty advisor left the school, and Dr. Pepperdene generously agreed to become my advisor, though I know she had more students than she could handle already. Everybody wanted her as an advisor, after all.
I would go to her in my lowest moments. When personal issues arose, when stress had me by the throat, when I didn't believe there was any way I could pass this test or write that paper, she was there. And I always left her believing that I could.
In my senior year, my father had filed bankruptcy without bothering to tell me. I didn't find out until I went to register for classes and found out my tuition had not been paid. I scrambled and got an emergency last minute student loan to pay for fall, but I had no idea how'd I pay for the rest. I was suddenly-- completely -- on my own, and couldn't even afford to buy my books.
When winter quarter started and I still had no idea what to do, and the registrar started again with warnings that I would have to leave, I went to Pepperdene's office and dissolved in hysterical tears.
She gave me a kleenex and told me that I would get through this, that I was too good not to get through it. She told me that she still remembered my enthusiasm and eagerness from the first meeting -- even Judas and Bram Stoker! -- and that she had fought for me then because she knew ASC was where I belonged.
She didn't make me any promises. It was only when I was called to the Dean's office that I found out she'd gone to administration, explained my situation, and got them to agree to making me a private loan to let me finish the year and graduate.
For several years, I sent her a Christmas card and got one in return. But then one year, the card didn't come. This was after her retirement, and I think she was trotting all over the country -- if not the world -- in her eternal quest for learning. I kept thinking that I would track her down some day.
When my first book was published, I sent her a copy through the school. I don't know if she got it or not. I hope she did. I hope she saw my grateful acknowledgment of her impact on my life as a person and a writer. I hope she knows she is one of the reasons I try, and have never stopped trying.
I hope she knows, even now, that I am so very grateful I had the pleasure and privilege of sitting in her classroom. That so much of the best of me was nurtured by her extraordinary gifts.
And now if you'll excuse me, I am going to read a little Chaucer -- if i can stop sniffling long enough -- and light a candle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffNH8yF6veY
