Where in the world is Wilhemina Loder?

This past weekend Wilhemina “Mina” Loder graduated with bachelor’s degrees in Classical Archaeology and Geography as one of twelve Dean’s Distinguished Graduates in the College of Liberal Arts, recognized for her scholarship, leadership, and service. Grace Gibson sat down with Mina to discuss her journey as a nontraditional student, adventuring archaeologist, and academic star.

Mina and I met for coffee on a Friday morning at the University’s Alumni Center. It’s decorated with several life size bronzes of longhorns and ranching horses. It’s the kind of place that doesn’t let you forget that you are in Texas, and seemed like a fitting locale to ask Mina about how — after being deployed to Iraq, protecting the nation’s defenses in D.C., and venturing to Rome as a tourist — she ended up here. When I asked Mina what kind of information I should include in a brief biographical sketch about her, she started from the beginning.

WL: One of the biggest and most easily-identifiable things I’ve done prior to this was being in the US Military, but that’s a very loaded identity, and one that I don’t often parade. I’ve always been reluctant to trot that out as the first thing, but it’s been really important in my life and it’s been pivotal, and the reason I’m here is that I actually have full funding because of the GI Bill.

My whole family’s military. I’m going to be a first generation college graduate. My dad is a cab driver. My stepfather drives a Peterbilt truck, very working class background. My parents always wanted me to go to college, but I think navigating the path to get there was so challenging for them and challenging for me after high school that we didn’t successfully do that. But I feel that it’s been better in a way. I’ve been able to excel because I’ve treated this so professionally and I’ve put so much effort into my studies in a way that I know I wouldn’t have at 19 years old.

GG: So there was a long path before you ended up in Texas?

WL: I went to basic training in Missouri, but then I went to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterrey, which is prestigious in the military, and for language training, it’s very well-known. It’s a fully immersive language academy and you go to school five days a week, nine hours a day, and you learn a language. You’re also doing military duties — push-ups in a filed, running in groups. I like to think of it as the Hogwarts of the Military… I ended up getting stationed in Colorado in the military and I deployed to Iraq with the Fourth Infantry Division for a year.

Mina explained that after her six year enlistment, she ended up working in defense contracting, where her fluency in Arabic, her technical skills, and her experience were more valuable than formal education. Nevertheless, she was drawn to opportunities to further her education.

WL: I interviewed for a couple of jobs as a linguist and as a translator, and they just instantly wanted to send me back to Iraq, and that was not interesting to me…. It was always too easy to continue working because it was very lucrative to do a very challenging and a very fun job defending the nation’s networks. But I always went to school at night and on the weekends, wherever I could at community colleges, and it took me a long time to figure out where I was going. I took one class at the University of Maryland Baltimore County on the history of ancient Greece because I just needed something to fill out my schedule. I took it and I loved it. The next semester, I had another opening in my schedule, and I saw that the same professor was teaching Roman archaeology, and I took it and absolutely loved it. Being an adult with my own money, I somewhat impulsively bought a plane ticket over spring break and I went to Rome while I was taking this course. I spent nine days, the most time I could, from Friday night to the next weekend in Rome, just walking around, and I could instantly register the implications and origins of buildings and structures. It was incredible. And it was just, I don’t know, do you get sad when you leave Rome?

GG: Yeah, I haven’t spent that much time in Rome itself, but Italy — yes. And there’s a time of year when I start feeling that kind of ache.

WL: Exactly. I left and I felt depressed. I felt like I had been broken up with or lost a great love of my life. It was such a weird feeling.

While working in the D.C. area, Mina met her future husband. They both had career opportunities in Texas, and, remembering how much she enjoyed weekend trips to Austin during a posting at a Texas military base, Mina decided to make the move. Her hunger for higher education continued.

WL: Finally, I thought, ‘you know what? I have my GI Bill funding. I’ve never gone to school full time. I’ve always wanted to go to school full time. I’m going to apply to UT and see what happens.’ I knew it was a good school, but I didn’t know how good of a school it was until I didn’t get accepted, because I kept applying for computer science because that was my area of expertise. That was my area of expertise, my background…. I finally got accepted for Classics, which was my backup major. I had always said, if money were no object, I would pursue Classics. Because it’s the most interesting and stimulating thing I’ve ever studied, and I just felt like the universe was telling me something…. I’ve worked maybe since I was 17, since I was 16. I moved out on my own at 18 and supported myself. So it was a now or never moment. And I quit my job. They thought I was crazy.

I had my first semester…. I was always very hesitant to ask for any special favors. I felt like an outsider. What am I doing? It was difficult to make friends at first because I was shy about it and self-conscious…. It was a little rough, but it’s funny, because I even became friends with the 18 year old student who’s been in my class since my first Latin because the Latin cohorts get really tight. Have you taught Latin yet?

GG: No, not yet. I’m really hoping to do it soon. We grad students all take pedagogy in our second year.

WL: You’ll find the cohorts get really tight.

GG: You said Morgantina was life-changing. How?

WL: I thought I would take a two year vacation [from work] in Classics since I came in with over 100 hours of credit. I had graduated from the Defense Language Institute with an Associate’s Degree in Arabic. I thought I would get done in two years. I would cut all my spending and just have fun. And then I went to dinner with Eta Sigma Phi, and met Dr. [Alex] Walthall, and it came out that I was in the military and was an archaeology major, and he said, ‘You should come to Morgantina.’ By the end of the evening, he was like, ‘You need to come to Morgantina this season.’ I remember going to his office and talking about the opportunity and my whole world shifted. Up until that moment this was just an experience. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t something I could do with my life because it seemed so far-removed from anything I’d ever done. It’s something you hear about in adventure stories —being an archaeologist. And Sicily, I would go back in a heartbeat. It’s accessible.

GG: The sense of community?

WL: Yeah.

GG: I think you’d also like Naples.

We discussed the Villa of the Mysteries and a shared interest in Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah before Mina gave me some advice about discussing my own academic feats, shedding light on her approach to learning and claiming space in academia.

WL: You’re an Italian speaker, right?

GG: Well, I try.

WL: You are! It’s like saying you’re a runner. You run, you’re a runner. You get out and put your shoes on. Imposter syndrome is too pervasive in academia. It’s something you might struggle your entire life to overcome. It’s depressing but also a relief to know you can make small changes now to vouch for yourself.

We talked more about her academic and research interests at UT. She’s focused much of her research, specifically with Dr. Rabun Taylor, on Roman water, from the symbolism of the Rhine to the geomorphological processes that affected water access from Italy to the Roman frontiers. For one project, she identified water basins in Pompeii to assess non-elite access.

GG: Can I ask what it’s been like being a parent doing your undergraduate education?

WL: That’s been intense. I have to say as a working professional and as a student, part of me sees the value in doing it as a student because your schedule is flexible, and you can talk to a professor. You won’t lose funding because you miss class. Everyone was really willing to work with me. My first son was born in June, so all that affected was my summer field work. I wasn’t able to excavate. I had excavated the year prior at Morgantina, which was fascinating and amazing and I have to say Dr. Walthall changed my life with that experience. I arrived [at UT] in January, and usually [Morgantina] is competitive because it doesn’t cost money. He truly believes the dig should be free because it lets a more diverse group excavate. I was able to excavate there because of that. I got pregnant a month after I got back. The first semester no one knows you’re pregnant. No one can see it; it’s fine. You’re just tired and sick all the time. The only person I told was Margaret [Clark]. She was my Latin professor, and now we’re friends…. I didn’t have any serious complications, but some women get them. There’s these one-off complications.

GG: And you can’t know if you’ll experience them until you’re in it. There’s no way to predict it.

WL: Exactly. I used to think if you were healthy you wouldn’t get it. And I tried to stay healthy. I’ve run a few marathons…

GG: Casual marathons!

WL: But I was really lucky. It didn’t affect my studies. I would take a nap every day. I was just tired. Luckily my son wasn’t born until June, so in the spring semester I was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I remember my classmate joked, when I took a big class with Dr. Taylor and one of my friends from my Latin cohort said, ‘Mina, maybe you’ll go into labor and we won’t have to take our final’…. I was really glad I could fit into the desks all the way through, because in Waggener, they are those permanent ones.

GG: Wow, I never even thought about the accessibility issue.

WL: In Dr. Papalexandrou’s class, in the ART building, I had to sit in the end desk, and then write on the next desk. I had to take two seats because I could no longer put the desk down. One time I had to ask a girl to move. I said, ‘you’re in my writing desk.’ I had my baby December 1st, before the semester even ended.

GG: I can’t imagine!

WL: It was rough. They say your second baby comes sooner than the first one, but you don’t know, so I had no idea how much of the semester I could get through. I worked with all my professors and got everything done early except for Dr. Nethercut, who told me not to worry, that we would get to it. I took a final in chemistry five days after my baby was born. I didn’t want to wait until January. My mom was here, and it was raining, and she drove me into an alley and parked illegally. I nursed my baby and then I went in, took my final, and then came back out. I made an 88, and I was like, I’ll take it. I got an A in the class.

GG: That’s incredible.

Dr. Rabun Taylor, who happened to walk by the coffee shop: Are you two conspiring?

GG: Absolutely!

WL, smiling at Dr. Taylor’s greeting: A newborn is stressful. But I did so much better than I thought I would. I tell myself to relax, I don’t have to try so hard, but I can’t. I never guessed I would graduate with distinction.

GG: It’s really great to talk to someone with their own trajectory.

WL: Part of me struggled not to have a chip on my shoulder about it but everyone has been great. I know not everyone’s parents are academics, but mine didn’t graduate from high school.

GG: Yeah, our understandings of the norm can be really off. What advice would you give to someone considering higher education even though it’s not a given?

WL: Keep going. Keep going as far as you can. And there is funding! But it’s not only hard for us to get here in the first place; it’s hard when we get here. We have to have a network. We have to reach out to professors…. Keep asking. Keep asking for opportunities. The best advice I got was from Dr. Walthall. He said to take risks in your education. Be brave…. There’s knowledge to learn, but there are also experiences. The confidence you gain from the experience of an education is something you have to do for yourself. It’s been really good for me.