on never making it…

You’re a sweet girl. You have a great personality, but I need to be honest. You’ll never make it.

The trees and the color-changing leaves lightly clung on dry branches swaying in the autumn wind. The California sun was still hot though Fall rolled in. Students clamored from class to class, the campus fountain slashed year after year, and another semester on the Whittier College campus began.

She shifted her weight to her opposite hip and held her slides, notebooks, and lecture cards tightly in her arms. Her matted brown hair and pale skin proved the outdoors were exchanged for a library or office, dark and smelling of books. Her wide, rimmed glasses were pushed higher on her nose as she squinted at the sun.

Hoover Hall, Whitter College

The midterm had finished and I proudly turned in my essay knowing it was crafted so thoroughly I was adding to Art History’s lexicon. It was so organized, I believed historians would laud my efforts and use my work as a reference point for Chardin’s “Soap Bubbles,” to add to the art history cannon.

The students filed out of the small room in Hoover Hall and I waited patiently at my desk until the room was empty. The floor boards creaked as I made my way to her desk to turn in my magnum opus on French art circa 1780. As I turned in my midterm, I asked if she would help mentor me in the graduate school process as well as write a letter of recommendation. Why would you want to go and do something like that, Miss Juarez? Do you know what kind of people get into Art History? You would never make it.

Without reading my essay or grading my report, she felt confident enough to mangle my dreams and destroy my hope of graduate school and a PhD. Her statement was based on nothing else except class participation, attendance, and short art write-ups, all of which were stellar. But she believed I wouldn’t make it in the art world, I wouldn’t make it in academia.

The words crushed me.

She picked up her slides, notebooks, and lecture cards, turned off the lights, and shuffled out of the room. I walked with her down the stairs, through the corridor, and out the glass double doors trying to understand why she thought I would never make it, why she thought I wouldn’t want it.

She squinted at the sun, shifting her weight to her other hip like she knew something I didn’t. You’ll never make it, she said. She patted my shoulder and said she wished me the best. It was the last day I spoke with her, but her prophetic words are still remembered even today.

Professor X,

You were right. Seven years later—with a 4.0 gpa and Masters degree in Humanities—I didn’t make it. I was never suppose to.

Thank you for crushing my small, plithy dreams. It allowed me to dream impossible dreams.

I didn’t make it. And I couldn’t be happier.

Though I couldn’t see it then, I believe it now.

Warmly,
Bianca, Whitter College, Class of 2002