I love words; people like me are called logophiles.  My earliest memories of  childhood are like faded and hazy advertisements from a late 1970’s Good Housekeeping magazine.  Our kitchen was a collision of avocado green and harvest gold.  Deliberately together, in one place.  My mind’s eye burns when I envision the color palate that ensconsed my youth. It was the early 80s.  Sitting at the kitchen table, I remember reading the dictionary out loud to my mother while she cooked.  The pronunciations of consonant-laden words often snagged my tongue, but I eventually mastered all of them.  My mother made dinner and sipped wine from a burgundy, Avon Cape Cod goblet.  She was nothing if not meticulous; always a perfect 4 oz. pour. No more and no less.  

Time would pass and I won spelling bees.  As a kid, I simply could not get enough words, writing, and reading.  I don’t actually derive much pleasure remembering my history itself; rather, what makes me the happiest are the words used to transport my readers to a time and place long ago.  A well-told story should send the 5 senses into overdrive.  I can still smell Hungarian Goulash on the stove as words like specificity and wamble passed my lips.  Eventually I realized that words make stories feel real, but great and well-placed words make an imagination dance on paper.  My life changed.  I moved to Georgia, met a guy, and got married.  

I started college after marriage, but I was still painfully young.  My first experience in school was lackluster at best.  I won’t divulge the name of the first university I attended in Georgia.  Suffice it to say that it was not a fit.  At all.  But that’s neither my fault, nor the school’s.  We simply didn’t match in the ways we needed to.   I didn’t expect much.  Nobody told me that I could or should; befallen on me was any notion of, “fit.”     

When I finally found my academic home, my brain exploded.  I went from consuming brainy melba toast to cerebral fine dining.  Agnes Scott College became my first intellectual obsession.  The Gothic and Victorian-themed architecture, southern magnolias, and dogwoods served as the backdrop to my learning.  The professors at my alma mater were rigorous, exacting, and tore my writing apart, in what originally seemed like sport.  But, I soon came to see the ink from their green Bic pens as intellectual love notes, handwritten just for me.  They remain some of the smartest women I’d ever meet and they hail from the halls of the finest institutions, too.  My brain was molded by human extensions of the Ivy Leagues and the best research institutions in the world; it remains equal parts honor and privilege to have been their pupil.  

Contrary to popular belief, a solid liberal arts education does not indoctrinate students into any normative belief systems, it informs thought processes.  My professoriate collectively tore apart my logic and reasoning, introduced me to concepts like relativism, and shaped my intellect.  I was never taught what to think, I was taught how to think and buttress my personal views with sound reason and analysis.  It was intoxicating.  I graduated magna cum laude with a degree in United States History.   The B+ on my transcript, which held me back from the summa cum laude distinction,  is a badge of honor.  Affectionately called B Plus Gus, my con law professor was the hardest I’d ever experience in a classroom, including my PhD coursework.  Nobody made it out of his class with an A and exceedingly few with a B+.    

I took a year off after graduation and worked in corporate America.  That was a bust.  Suits don’t like words unless they are short, lacking depth, and easily spell-checked by Microsoft.  I also cannot stand business lingo.  Concepts like throughput and circle-back are too sterile. I wanted to pick brains and open a thesaurus and play with words all day.    

So, I quit and decided it was all or nothing.  With the support of my husband, off I went for my master’s degree in political science.   And I couldn’t stop.  I finished my MA program and went on for my PhD.  As a graduate student, I taught my first class in American Government at Georgia State University and discovered that college freshmen are captivating people.  Picking their brains is a fascinating and whimsical journey.  Sometimes frustrating, but enjoyable nonetheless.  Young minds can be quite erudite, buy only if you listen long enough.

I passed my written and oral comprehensive exams, began writing my dissertation, and then welcomed babies.  Two, in quick succession.  While my dissertation remains incomplete, my journey is hardly over.  It would be a student from my very first collegiate teaching experience that asked for help with an essay, putting me on this path as a writer…all those years ago.  I was  hooked.  And here we are…