The Best of the Best

Who’s your all-time favorite teacher? Do you remember someone special who changed your life for the better?

When I entered Hazel Dicken-Garcia’s class, I was in graduate school at the University of Minnesota. She didn’t want to be called “Professor” (she preferred “Hazel”) although she was a professor emerita. I liked her. She had full command of her well-validated material.

When it came time to select an adviser for my thesis process, I chose Hazel. That’s when we got to know each other, and an unforgettable journey in academia followed. Her research methodology class was her wheelhouse, and we all knew it. More than a few times, I marveled at the mammoth project ahead of me. How was I to measure up to her standards of quality?

Hazel’s renowned expertise was journalism history, especially 19^thCentury practices and the Civil War period. I expected first-rate editing, and I got it. She thoroughly redlined my first draft, saying, “This isn’t the level of scholarship I want from you yet.” Since redlining is normal for editors and writers, I rewrote without much concern.

The second draft was better, and she complemented my writing, but my research questions needed work. Melba toast research questions bothered her significantly, and obviously mine weren’t even crunchy enough to qualify for melba toast. “This is not scholarship yet,” she reiterated, sending me back to my methodology notes. By that time in my journalism education, I had made peace with a writer’s life. Revisions are as basic to a writer as chisels are to a sculptor.

Finally, after completing all my classes, I devoted a solid three months to substantive editing, but when we met, she gave me a scathing review of some parts of it, because it wasn’t “scholarship” enough for her yet. I went home exasperated. I told my daughter, “That was the very best I could do.”

Have you ever been in that situation, when your best wasn’t good enough? I was frustrated. I didn’t know she was teaching me much more than journalism. She was strengthening me as a human being.

Fortunately, although I’ve got a lot of faults, quitting isn’t one of them. The next day, I studied every comment, line by line. As I struggled to improve a document I had considered my best effort, I learned something only Hazel could teach me.

There was another best in me—241 pages worth.

I submitted two more revisions before I finally heard, “It’s time to schedule your final comprehensive exam with your committee.” I was shocked! It was done? As in “good to go”? No red lines? She smiled as though it were simple logic, but I thought I had entered thesis heaven. My elation didn’t last long, though. She said, “Understand, Marianne, that you will defend your thesis, answer questions about current events relevant to journalistic practices and theory, and anything you’ve learned in any class you’ve taken is fair game.”

I spent the next couple of months pouring over my class notes. Thankfully, I passed, and my thesis resides among all the theses of my fellow research comrades.

Years later, when Hazel retired, I sent her a gift. To my astonishment, in her thank you note, she complemented, of all things, my scholarship. I said out loud, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Then I realized what she had done.

She saw something in me I didn’t know I had, and she wasn’t going to be happy until she got it. That’s what a great teacher does.

She didn’t just change my life for the better. She taught me how to find the very best of the best in myself.

No other teacher believed in me as much as she did.

I thank God for you, dear Hazel.