Twenty-one Octobers ago, I was a college student hovering over one of life’s many threshold moments, poised between what seemed at the time like teenager-hood on one side…and the yawning gap of “adulting” beyond. It was fall of my junior year at the University of South Carolina (yes, Go Gamecocks and especially their women’s basketball team, but I digress).

Beginning my fifth semester of college, I found myself right at that halfway moment in college where things start to seem more real and people begin to ask you a little more about what you might actually do after graduation.  And I….I did not feel like myself at all. I felt like I was trudging through molasses. Everything seemed foggy and gray, as though I was peering through a grimy, smudged window at other people, who cheerfully and purposefully strode through sunlit spaces, while I remained ineluctably apart, unable to access them or the bright clarity they so appeared to possess.  

In hindsight, I know I was struggling with a depressive episode, but I didn’t have language for that at the time because I’d never walked through that before.  So it just felt like something had gone terribly wrong. Tired and unmotivated, I abruptly pulled out of the many extracurricular activities I had been industriously undertaking–from our version of an ambassador in admissions (including being one of six who helped host fancy gatherings at the university president’s house) to a res hall council member and community volunteer.  I decided that I needed to pull back on my ambitious coursework as well.  As an honors student double-majoring in English and Spanish, I hoped to possibly attend graduate school for literature one day, and so I determined that I needed a breather.  Maybe, I mused, I could scale back on a course or two that wasn’t as essential for my still-developing doctoral plans.

That term I was enrolled in a fascinating honors seminar on pre-1800s African history, a subject about which I knew embarrassingly little. I didn’t fully appreciate how fascinating this class was, however, because at that moment I lacked the capacity for true awe or wonder. To this day, I can still vividly recall the course’s kindly and erudite professor who, prior to his Peace Corps service in Uganda and graduate work, had graduated from Kalamazoo College.  As a twenty year-old South Carolinian, I had no idea where Kalamazoo was; it sounded as faraway to me as the many centuries-removed history I was attempting to puzzle out.

I visited Dr. Atkinson’s office hours because I had resolved to switch from the honors seminar version of this class to a lecture-based version, with less intensive reading assignments and less corresponding projects.  I would still learn the material, I reasoned, but without as many additional requirements. Stepping into his office out of polite obligation (in my estimation anyway), I certainly didn’t want him to think I didn’t like his course. I thought it my duty to inform him of my change in plans so he would not be surprised when I moved from one roster to another on his teaching schedule.

I still remember how he peered at me through his glasses as I dutifully stood before him, reciting my plan.  He smiled softly and asked me to sit down.  How was I doing?  What did I think about the book we’d been reading?  What else was I taking that semester, and why had I chosen his class in the first place?

It all came tumbling out. Or, at least, some of it did.

Gently and with the care of a seasoned mentor, Dr. Atkinson encouraged me to stay–and not, I should hasten to add, because I needed to prove myself as some sort of exceptional college student or as someone who could not slow down and take a breath. (As a former academic advisor now myself, let me just reiterate: quadruple-majoring remains a bad idea! You do not need to do ALL. THE. THINGS.)

All these years later, I better recognize what he was up to that day. I think he intuited that what I actually, desperately needed was to relax my death-grip on the idea of who I was supposed to be–someone who never made less than an A, a perfectionist with a logical plan for academic and career success. 

Drawing me out in conversation, Dr. Atkinson encouraged me to stay in the class, not because I should but because it would be an opportunity to lean into curiosity. Indeed, the same sort of curiosity that propelled me toward exploring and analyzing themes and patterns in literature could find an outlet in these ancient primary documents. What patterns might I discover in the cultural traces of these historical texts? What stories were they telling beneath the lineages and lists? Why did it matter?

Ultimately, this proved (almost) invitation enough. Truth be told, I’m sure some part of my decision to stick it out in his seminar was rooted in a fear of disappointing him. But another part of my decision stemmed from his ability to see through my facade to the heart of the matter. What I needed wasn’t a plan to open up my schedule…so that I could probably push myself that much harder in literature seminars. What I needed was a release, a reminder of why any of this complex humanities work spoke to me and resonated so powerfully in the first place. I needed to reconnect with creativity and curiosity, and, perhaps slowly, with myself and a world blessedly bigger than me.

I’m sharing this story today after giving a version of it several weeks ago for Morning Prayer. I am so grateful to Pastor Jim and my colleagues in Calling & Spiritual Life for settling on this year’s Monday Morning Prayer theme as “That Time I Asked for Help.”  On the surface, it seems like a strange theme–certainly not the sort I remember my pastors growing up might have organized a sermon series around–but it makes a lot of sense on our college campus, where we’re all (whether students or not) learning and growing and challenging ourselves and falling short and getting back up and reflecting and learning anew.  

That’s the essential work of education after all, but it’s also the essential work of being human.  We just need reminders from time to time, and sometimes those reminders are grace-filled encounters when we admit we need someone else’s perspective or guidance. Other times (and often in my own experience), someone else perceives the heart of the matter, gently offering up the support you didn’t realize, let alone begin to articulate, that you needed. 

That is grace, and that is a gift, if we can only be wise enough to humbly receive it.

–Dr. Anna Stewart, Director of the Institute for Leadership and Service