To be fair, I must write this post.
Most changes happen one conversation at a time. I had to remember that when I’m thinking about my feelings here.
Today I actually went walking on campus with my husband. Crisp air, around 50 degrees and just cool enough to feel good without a jacket. It was a better day than Monday, Sept. 26. And something happened — I burst into tears. What is that all about, I mean seriously?! Not all sad tears, just a bundle of emotions in my heart that needed to purge. Yeah, imagine that, “mean” Prof. Steele cries.
People are responding to my “Gamut” piece. Thank you for the notes and criticism. We learn from everything. I came back to my office to read some notes written by former students. Needed to think more about change. I always wondered if students wrote them to be polite, to butter me up and/or because I really meant something. You just never know. I wanted to reflect on all of my experiences here and be fair in criticism. I stand by what I wrote in the “Gamut” piece, BUT I wanted to also remember the good moments.
The first Ole Miss journalism school graduation I attended was in 2013. It was also the first time I cried here.
No one prepared me for the emotions of seeing students leave. We were greeting students in the back of the auditorium — my second year of teaching, but the first graduation to participate in, and I cried. Ruined my makeup and my face was red, it’s that good Irish blood (thanks, Mom). I laugh now. It was so hard to “let go” of the journalism students I had learned to care so much about.
As a rookie professor I was wondering, “Had I taught them enough in my classes? Was I explanatory enough? Did I take my time and really dig into something? Was there enough class discussion? Things I still wonder.
On that graduation day I walked by with tears running down my cheeks and heard a student whisper, “Prof. Steele cries?”
LOL. Yeah, I do. I also cried in 2014 when several of my “babies” graduated- Jared Senseman, Katie Williamson and Sha Simpson. All very different students, who came from very different backgrounds. Jared, a White male from the Jackson area, who called himself a “redneck” — I cringed everytime he said it; Katie, a White academic-type, who was too book smart for her own good; Sha’, a female Black student, with beautiful dreadlocks from New Albany who is also a talented writer. And then there was Jhesset Enano, our amazing journalism student from the Philippines, who was so serious and attentive to detail. She excelled at everything, a dream student. All so completely different in backgrounds, but so much alike.
I want to talk about Jared and Sha. They met in my photojournalism
(Jour 375) class in 2013.
I’m smiling now as I think about these two misfits. Super protective of them, super hard on them, but they soon learned my bark was worse than my bite.
Anyway, Sha nicknamed me “M.O.M.” — Mother of Misfits. How fitting. They met when I decided to take students to Clarksdale, Mississippi to photograph live music at Ground Zero Blues Club. I have been working on a coffee table for owners Morgan Freeman and Bill Luckett (now going on three years), and I wanted to spend time outside of class with students who were interested in photography; who wanted to talk and learn at a live event. It allowed us to just be. I wanted to know what was on their minds. I often took a variety of students on other trips so they would get to know each other in a less-than formal setting. What I saw between Jared and Sha, warms my heart — still. They became best friends, at least for that year. They still talk now.
Sha, is now my daughter (she calls my mom “Gigi” and they text each other-sometimes I’m jealous that my mom writes to Sha more than she does to me). Sha has a great job as an assistant director of training for a company and Jared is in London, finishing up his master’s thesis. I’m so proud of these two knuckleheads. I’m thinking about how I wanted students to unwind and have fun outside of Oxford, but my motive was much deeper.
I took students on these drives into the Delta. My point was to:
1. Have them see an area outside of Oxford. Life isn’t just Oxford.
2. Have diversity in the car. No outside influences, just having a good time.
3. Teach them about covering live events. It’s hard to do that in a class. Sometimes I cherry-picked taking students, sometimes I took whoever signed up. I always drove my car and took two -three students.
I did it for a year. It helped me grow as a professor.
4. I learned that students opened up much more outside of class. Not a surprise here. No pressure to be a certain way, talk a certain way, or act a certain way. We were just people hanging out. Amazing how that helps the soul.
In 2013, I also took Jared to a KKK rally in Memphis (my husband joined us because he thought we were nuts and wanted to protect us). It rained all day, and we were soaked but we talked about race issues, among other things. Jared eventually got access into a KKK private meeting for his multimedia project and was texting me images. I wanted to know the location and name of the person for safety reasons. I was scared something would happen to him. I advised him to tell his mother where he was, never mind that Jared was, I think, 24 years old at the time. But I worried. I wanted to go with him and hide in the car just to make sure he was safe. He told me no. Me being me, I gave critical feedback of his images and his text read, “Al, I’m just trying not to get killed here.” LOL. I had to step back and remember that he was a student and was probably scared out of his mind. Do I think attending such a meeting is a good idea? No. But Jared did what he wanted to do.
I wished I had been there with him to help guide him with taking the photos, but I was proud that he gained access to a secretive group as journalists sometimes do, and that he was interested in pushing himself, but in the back of my mind Iwas hoping he wouldn’t get brainwashed.
He brought back a flyer and signed it. The significance isn’t lost on me. Said he was afraid to have it in his car for fear that people would think he was racist. But what he wrote on it has more meaning than the words he simply wrote. It had nothing to do with race, and more about him pushing himself out of his comfort zone in storytelling — regardless of the story angle or topic. One day this note will hang it in my office, but for now I just keep it on top of the pile.
All student momentos and notes are precious. I read them when days are long and I question if I’m doing the right thing at the right place.
What I do know is that I love Jared, Katie, Jhesset and Sha, and a host of students Logan, Jared B., Ariel, Kamera, Tyler C., Caroline, Madisen, Ashley, Alexis, Maggie Mae, Joanie…
So, I say all of this to say that some days are harder than others, but I have to remember that sometimes learning is just one student at a time, one moment at a time. And it doesn’t matter where you are. Me and Mississippi? We’re trying to figure each other out for now.
