Warming to a Yankee
Rachel Hicks
Issue date: 2/21/07 Section: Features
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Despite being a Harvard student, I was only vaguely interested in the institution's search for a new president. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered Harvard had chosen my first history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, to lead its venerated university. While I won't pretend to know everything Harvard needs in its new president, I do know that besides being a top-rate scholar and teacher, Dr. Faust could lead her followers into the fire-which is a welcome change from a leader who inspired his colleagues to want him fired.
I met Dr. Faust in my first semester at Penn, when she was teaching History of the American South, 1865 to present. A Southerner myself, I saw taking Dr. Faust's class as a way to connect my college experience with home, even though I had been warned by friends and former teachers to avoid being taught Southern history by a "Yankee." Needless to say, I arrived on my first day of Dr. Faust's class with a mix of emotions that ranged from excitement to suspicion to anxiety. Would I spend the entire class on the defensive, paranoid that everyone wanted to learn about the South only to strengthen their feelings of superiority?
Luckily, it was not quite so, as I would quickly learn that Dr. Faust was not a Yankee at all, but a Virginian who was every bit as obsessed with the South as I was. By mid-semester, she had more than earned my respect and admiration for her insightful and well-prepared lectures, willingness to challenge us to look beyond stereotypes and commonly-held "myths," and her obvious passion for her subject and her job.
What cemented her legacy in my mind was the eventful last day of class. That morning, she started by announcing that after over two decades at Penn, she had accepted a job at Harvard and was leaving after the semester ended. Our class would be her very last one to teach at Penn.
Before we could feel too sad, she let us get indignant. Our class was going to be interrupted by a fire drill that a building administrator had carelessly scheduled for the last day of classes. To make matters worse, she hadn't been informed of the drill until it was too late to try to find an alternate meeting room.
I met Dr. Faust in my first semester at Penn, when she was teaching History of the American South, 1865 to present. A Southerner myself, I saw taking Dr. Faust's class as a way to connect my college experience with home, even though I had been warned by friends and former teachers to avoid being taught Southern history by a "Yankee." Needless to say, I arrived on my first day of Dr. Faust's class with a mix of emotions that ranged from excitement to suspicion to anxiety. Would I spend the entire class on the defensive, paranoid that everyone wanted to learn about the South only to strengthen their feelings of superiority?
Luckily, it was not quite so, as I would quickly learn that Dr. Faust was not a Yankee at all, but a Virginian who was every bit as obsessed with the South as I was. By mid-semester, she had more than earned my respect and admiration for her insightful and well-prepared lectures, willingness to challenge us to look beyond stereotypes and commonly-held "myths," and her obvious passion for her subject and her job.
What cemented her legacy in my mind was the eventful last day of class. That morning, she started by announcing that after over two decades at Penn, she had accepted a job at Harvard and was leaving after the semester ended. Our class would be her very last one to teach at Penn.
Before we could feel too sad, she let us get indignant. Our class was going to be interrupted by a fire drill that a building administrator had carelessly scheduled for the last day of classes. To make matters worse, she hadn't been informed of the drill until it was too late to try to find an alternate meeting room.
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