We've all heard it.
"My door is always open."
The professors hand out syllabi with their contact information and office hours at the top, and inform you that they will be there to answer any questions you may have…as long as you have them only during office hours and they don't have a post-it on their door that says they're unavailable and you're willing to wait outside while they finish up a phone call and it strictly pertains to the course and you have the courage to knock on their literally closed door.
College is its own life phase, different from anything else. Most of us are just trying to get by, living in a kind of pseudo-adulthood. Even when I was married with a home of my own, I was acutely aware of the security net that was my college around me. I have learned from living in limbo, and there have been surprises for me around every corner. What has been most surprising and most pleasant is the kind of family I have built for myself at my school.
Those of us at UVa-Wise that find ourselves taking classes in Zehmer Hall know that she is probably in need of some serious remodeling. New shiny and towering brick buildings rise up around her while she remains forgotten, with the new library beginning to block her view while she is mocked from across the sculpture garden by the younger, more beautiful Science Center. Despite the building's many flaws, most of us that take classes there are appalled when our schedule drags us elsewhere. It is not the dingy green tile adorning the exterior beneath each window, or the stalls in the ladies' room that are placed in such a way that they don't even close that have caused us to flock to Zehmer for sanctuary, resenting the gen-eds that force us across the garden or down the hill.
When my personal life started to deteriorate and my health began to give me a lot of trouble, I kept most of my issues to myself. I've always thought of myself as an incredibly open person, but I've spent the last two years finding out that I terribly, terribly incorrect in that assumption. I did a great job at being OK, and very few people around me knew that I was trying to balance passing grades with failing health and a marriage on life support. In the fall of last year, I wandered into Zehmer 132 in search of some advice on a paper.
Marla Weitzman intimidated me very much at the start of my college career. Despite her request that her students call her by her first name and her tendency to sit at eye-level with her students throughout the class period, she was a presence towering over me. In a scholastic environment, I was used to people being relatively impressed with me. It was apparent early on with Marla that this kind of respect is not obtained by reputation. It must be earned. I had gotten some B's from her after turning in papers that felt like A's, and it was important to me that I break that pattern at the start of the new semester. I went in to ask about a paper and ended up talking about my personal life until the start of my next class. The seat I took on the couch against the wall in her office quickly became more a home to me than any I had taken since my home with my husband had begun its gradual deterioration.
Marla and her wife Kaye, an adjunct professor at the college, are a safe haven for so many of us now. We have come to their office to cry, laugh and panic. We have been welcomed into their home to celebrate, bond and eat some amazing homemade meals. We have shared with them news of our research and news of our marriages, pregnancies, jobs, home purchases and whatever else has come along that has been worth sharing. Those of us that seek them out have been adopted, and their unique role in all of our lives as scholastic mothers has been filled effortlessly.
So many of us feel lost in our world at college, losing perspective in the lines we wait in and the classes we find ourselves sitting through. If you look hard enough, there are doors that are actually always open and rare professors that will take the time to get to know more than your GPA. The door of Zehmer 132 is always open and its interior is always full. Inside is a professor (two professors on Tuesdays and Thursdays) whose office hours are a suggestion for the sake of formality. Marla has taught me, and several like me, about so much more than the delicate beauty of the words of Jane Austen. No one can promise that there will be a place to sit, but there is always room in 132.
