Hits Snooze Twice

Dr. Scourfield McLauchlan, Lily Ledbetter, Naomi and I.

Coquina 212 was the room in which I met Dr. JSM ¹ for the very first time. This was my very first day at USF St. Petersburg during the Spring 2009 semester and I was excited and scared to be in a class with the rest of my Political Science peers.  You see my first class that day was Modern Art History and I was anxious to have the rest of my political science classes ². I was curious to see who the typical political science student was, and I was anxious to make friends and to find out if I really did belong in this class. Would I be smart enough to not only be at this school but to contend with the rest of the students in this class and all my other classes?

Five minutes after the start of class Dr. JSM walks in with this trolley. She introduces herself and she starts conversing with some of the students as if she is already familiar with them and it turns out that she is– they had taken ConLaw I with her the previous semester. My heart starts to race because here I am thinking that I needed to take that class in order for me to even understand ConLaw II! After a quick introduction she reassures all of us that it is not necessary to have been in ConLaw I in order to take ConLaw II, but I am still scared. I am already for seeing my doom you see. I have a bad habit of always thinking the worst when I am in a new an unfamiliar situation.

After explaining the class structure and going through the syllabus, we began the Supreme Court tour slide show and later on we would play Supreme Court bingo for a prize ³. The intention of Supreme Court bingo is simple: to get to know your neighbor. You answer one question on the bingo square and you introduce yourself to another classmate to get another answer until you get five in a row. Its quite neat if I do say so myself. The prize can be a number of things that she has in her office, and its usually a book, a gavel pencil or a pocket Constitution.

I’ve never won any of these SCOTUS bingo games in all the classes that I have taken with her. Mostly because I was shy and I kept to myself. You have to remember I was petrified of her, the class and the students! I was 23 and probably the oldest student there thinking I was going to fail in spectacular fashion. I had no time to chit chat and make friends. These people would eat me alive if I wasn’t careful.

So I hit the books. I took my time in doing my very first brief, and I read all the cases as best as I could. Somethings I understood and some I didn’t.  I got a check on my first brief and the only comment that she wrote on it was that I needed to double space the brief ⁴. Stupid mistake. I have to admit I felt dumb after that comment. How can you forget to double space?

Anyways, After that there were some weeks in which I was prepared and others in which I wasn’t. Dr. JSM randomly calls on people to either give out the facts of the case or to comment on the opinions written in the cases. Sometimes I knew it and sometimes I didn’t and it was only once in which I was called on in which I did not know what I was talking about so I looked at the book and just read from there. I felt like a doofus. I’m quite thankful that she is not really stern and doesn’t berate you when you don’t know something, but I’m the type of person that does not like to look like a fool in front of others, specially not infront of her and my peers. I had something to prove: that I belonged there, even though the only person I needed to prove that to was my self. I just didn’t know it then.

I over stressed myself for her midterm ⁵ and had no idea what to write for her legal research paper. I eventually settled on students first amendment rights after briefly contemplating on writing on the constitutionality of strip clubs. Yeah, those would have been some really FUN Google and LexisNexis searches.

I was nervous writing my paper and I thought it was a bit rushed and that parts of it didn’t make sense, but I finished it and turned it in. I was getting more and more comfortable in the class and was known as the guy who went ahead and briefed all potential cases that we had to turn in for the next week. I remember the day that I was handed back my paper and her telling me that it was the best paper of the class. I was flabbergasted. Speechless and walking on cloud 9. The only logical thing to do at the time was to tell everyone. I wasn’t expecting it and it gave me things huge rush of confidence.

I decided to take her Practical Politics class and to intern for her while working for the Center for Civic Engagement. I remember her being so pleased that I wanted to intern and I was scared, once again. This is her baby! What if I screw up? What if something goes wrong? It would be all on me. Scary. It turned out to be the best thing that I have ever done. That summer semester was fantastic. I met so many people I did so many things and I found a really good friend in Naomi while we both interned for the CCE and the Steve Kornell campaign. It truly was a life changing experience.

During that summer two things became even more clearer to me: after being stubborn and saying I didn’t want to go to law school I decided that it would be the best thing to do for me. Second, Dr. JSM became that professor that I would always admire and would always compare future professors to.

Dr. JSM has her groupies and I am not afraid to say that I am in that camp. People from different disciplines are attracted by her aura and take her classes joyfully. Why? Because she is a fantastic teacher of course! She gives out so much information to you about a case, she has experienced so much and really, really cares about all her students and wants to see them succeed.  Her office door is always open and she is willing to talk to you about anything.

Time and time again she has proven to be the smarted individual that I know and the person whose respect I crave the most. I’ve always wanted that from a teacher. I wanted that in high school, but only sort of got from my Spanish professor ⁶. Ever since Naomi and I have taken over the CCE, the relationship that we have with her has been more than that of a student-teacher. Its even more than being colleagues, as she once said of us, but that of friends? Its quite weird how to explain it.

Being her student and working for Dr. JSM has been my favorite part of my stay at USFSP. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great teachers on campus, but none of them have made me want to be more. Because of her classes I have developed a love for law and an aspiration to one day practice it or teach political science.  Through her classes I have met some good friends and because I joined the CCE I have been called (along with Naomi) an asset and indispensable to the campus.  I have grown more under her guidance than I would have if I had not taken her ConLaw II class.

I look back at my first day in her ConLaw II class and shake my head at my sillyness. Without her and that class I would be a completely different person. I like the person that I am right now. I like where I am headed in life despite not really knowing the path. Thanks to her guidance I have spoken and experienced things that I wasn’t able to do before or was too scared to. Thanks to her I have matured immensely and I owe her so much more than a simple blog post.

A few days before Naomi and I last saw her we wondered if she might cry at our very last meeting. What I didn’t want to say, but can say now is that if she cried I might cry myself. I actually feel pretty bad that I didn’t give her a proper goodbye and that the last time I spoke to her before she went left campus was on the telephone.  I wanted to give her a hug and wish her good luck in person and to thank her for everything.

I like to think that even years after I have moved on from USFSP and have eventually moved away from Florida, that Dr. JSM and I will still email each other, bouncing ideas back and forth between us. Who knows, I might even get to call her JA like her close friends already do!

In short, thank you for everything. You are an inspiration to many and I wish you much fun and excitement in Moldova. I look forward to that lunch when you get back in the spring.

P.S.- For those of you who are interested in her experiences as a Fulbright Scholar teaching abroad, the link to her blog can be found on my blog roll.