Susan Wilson is a professor of Communications at DePauw University. This semester she is teaching Family Communications class, which I am a part of. I interviewed her to get an insight on what it is like to be a professor.
Her Campus: What was your major in college? Susan Wilson: My major was performance studies which is a branch of communications. It is a degree about the performance of literature, like solo performance and group performance of literature.
HC: Where did you get your undergraduate and graduate degrees? SW: All of my three degrees were at Northwestern because Northwestern was at the time and probably still is the top school for performance. Also, my mother worked at Northwestern, so there was a faculty and staff discount to go to Northwestern, so I went there, which was very nice.
HC: Who is your role model? SW: I think there are people that are your role model for your regular life and people that are your role model for your career. I had some of the finest teachers at Northwestern. I still remember so many of them. The kind of intellectual rigor of my one teacher was amazing. The ability to relate to students was another teacher’s greatness. Many of them have passed now. I remember them very fondly.
HC: What made you become a professor? SW: I always wanted to teach. I started out teaching high school for a few years. In fact the author of our textbook for Family Communications, Kathleen Galvin, was my coordinating teacher when I did my student teaching for high school because she taught a class called “Speech for Teachers.” I really liked teaching high school, but after I taught for a few years, I think it can get very tiring. I had 180 students a day. I was teaching English and speech there, so the amount of papers I had to grade was a lot, too. So I went back to get my degree.
HC: What influenced you to want to teach? SW: I have always liked school. I think it is cool to share knowledge with other people and to learn from them. I think it is a kind of reciprocal relationship.
HC: As a woman were there any barriers in college, career, etc? SW: I cannot think about anything. I am sure if I went back long long ago there were things, but no. I guess I am more worried now because we worked on a lot of those things when I was young. Women worked to get better wages for women, to get better healthcare for maternity leave, some of this is still not done. So I think in some of ways, I feel worse for you guys in your age group because this should have been changed, right? Everyone has worked on it for so long. So when I hear a faculty/colleague say she is worried about will she be able to take off to have time with her baby, well yes the university has a policy but it is sometimes a very narrow policy depending on when the baby is born. So you have time but maybe they want you to come back in the middle of the semester. That is not exactly what you want to do. I wish things were better.
HC: What do you like most about your job? SW: I love teaching, I love being in the classroom. The energy you students give me, the way you see things differently, you bring things in. I like advising a lot; I like working one-on-one with students about their career path. I like being in charge of the Speaking and Listening Center because I am essentially training kids to help other kids which is a kind of teaching, right? So I am trying to pass that love of teaching down. So those are all the things I love.
HC: What is your favorite class to teach? SW: That is an interesting question because I will be retiring at the end of this academic year, so people say you should teach your favorite class as your last class and I say “But I really do not have a favorite class.” It is like, which of your favorite children do you like better? I like them all, so I said whatever is fine. But I imagine I will still be teaching after I retire. People have asked me that. I help kids with their 4-H projects. I will do some sort of teaching.
HC: What is a 4-H project? SW: It is like a community club usually in rural America. Kids do some projects, like some of them have a sheep or cow that they raise and they show at the fair and they get ribbons. Other kids bake a pie, do something like that. But I sew. Lots of times kids want to know how to sew. So I have done that for about six years, helping kids with their sewing projects. That is teaching, right?
HC: What is your motto? SW: My mother used to read a storybook to me and it was called “The Little Engine That Could” and it is about trains, human trains. They could talk. Their train broke down, so they are trying to convince another train engine to take them over the mountain so the boys and girls over the mountain can get toys and candy. Two engines say they cannot do that. One says they are too important to do that, the second one is something else. The third one said, yeah she would try. She is a small little engine. She says to herself, “I think I can I think I can,” so she is trying to convince herself always. The hill is steep and she is going “I think I can, I think can,” and she gets to the top and she goes down and she goes, “I thought I could, I thought could.” The fact is that if you try to, maybe you can. So my mom read that to me when I was a little girl, so I was going to give that as a present to one of my friends when they had a child. And when I reread it, it is really a feminist text because the first two engines are men. They were too important, etc. The little engine is a woman. She says, “I think I can, I think I can.” So even though it was long long ago and I do not even know that the writer was thinking that, it really says women can do that. So. I think I can, I think I can. Maybe we can.