I Thought Size Mattered

I thought I would be physically bigger when I got to college. At five foot three (on a good day) and one hundred and fifteen pounds, I am exactly the same size as I was in seventh grade. Granted, I do not look like a seventh grader. But I always thought I would be a five-seven goddess, with men panting at my heels, by the time I reached college. I am not. I am a midget who can’t believe she is allowed to walk among the giants.

For my first few weeks, I had no idea what a big deal most of my professors are. Some of them may be smaller than me in stature (shockingly), but they are all amazingly accomplished in the real world. They are published authors, researchers, former successful businessmen and businesswomen, and even former professional ski instructors.

I never really understood that professors aren’t just the high-end models of teachers. Until one afternoon in my literature class, when my professor lovingly mentioned the big, shiny new Borders in 29th Street Mall. “Yeah, it is really nice,” he said with a boyishly excited smile, like he was telling a close friend about a new toy over a couple of sandcastles in the playground sandbox. “Except they didn’t have my book,” he said with a dramatic sigh, “but you should go there anyway.”

Just before class, I had eaten a very large and tasty lunch, and the room was hot. So naturally, my head was beginning to sag delicately into the crook of my arm. But, my professor’s comment snapped my head up. Your what? You mean I could have strolled into Borders and pulled your book off the shelf—and now I am sitting here, fighting off my food coma in your class? For me, this was a moment roughly equivalent to man landing on the moon—the whole universe opened up to me with an almost audible rumble!

As I walked down the hall of professors’ offices forty minutes later, I couldn’t help but stare into each room with big round eyes, thinking, “Wow! They are all authors, and researcher, and important people.” Quite a few of them stared back at me, probably thinking, “Wow, I wonder what is wrong with that girl.”

I still cannot understand how such important people can take the time to teach a couple hundred eighteen-to-nineteen-year-olds to think and speak intelligently at cocktail parties. College was just something that came after high school. I did not realize what an opportunity it is. We get to chill out in a small city of like-minded academics and pass our time discussing our passions with the big names in our fields. Whoever though up the idea of college was a genius!

Perhaps the strangest thing is, after the initial intimidation and awe wore off, I realized that my professors didn’t seem to care that they were educated at Harvard and Cambridge, that they literally wrote the book on their subject, or that they are directing national research projects in their areas. They are willing to draw ideas even from a lowly freshman like myself.

In my stats class, I asked my professor a question about the difference between a line graph and a scatter plot with a line drawn on it. I was thrown off, I said, by a graph on the front of The Onion, about the outlook of the economy in relation to the number of beers consumed(http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nations_unemployment_outlook).
After skimming the article, she cracked into a big smile, explained that it was a scatter plot, and asked if she could keep the article to use in her later classes. When I dropped by her office hours the next week to ask her a question, she became so excited about my work in Google analytics that she asked for access to my account to lecture on the data tracking software in class, and to present to the Air Force as a method of gathering information for her research!

Working with all of these academic giants, and having them want to work with me, has had the strangest effect on me—it makes me think that it is possible for me to become a giant as well. Maybe I could write a book, or radically change the nation’s environmental policies, or even start a medical practice.

In class this afternoon, my literature professor told us the story of how he had met the author of the novel we are reading—a couple of times. We are reading Who’s Irish?, by Gish Jen, who had her short story “Birthmates” named one of the best short stories of the 20th century. He said that the first time they met, he was a student and was asked to introduce her during a guest lecture. The second time, he ran into her in the toothpaste isle. “Cambridge is the sort of place where you see people like that,” He offered with a shrug, “Who knows when you will walk into the dry cleaners and run into Julia Child?” It seems CU possesses the same magic that Cambridge has—and you never know who you will run into in the toothpaste isle.

Perhaps the fable of the lion and the mouse (where the lion is saved by the little mouse after he spares the mouse’s life) has some truth in it. Maybe my professors only grew to their current stature because they work with mice. Maybe they too were once mice. It makes me hope, that someday this particular midget can become a giant.

Coming next: When they said, “Get involved,” I did not know they would throw things.