Correspondence forges lasting links among professors and former students.

By Ali Crolius '84

Photographs by Steven Goldblatt '67

“I would also like to thank you just for everything,” wrote an alumna to Prof. James (left). “Perhaps you feel that you’ve not done all that much, but I disagree. I’ve appreciated ... the advice you’ve given me.”

The ink on the diploma is dry. The graduation photos have been sent to grandparents, uncles, aunts. Those first jobs, the travels abroad, the travails of graduate school and first apartments have imparted their measures of thrills and anguish. Like a pair of new shoes broken in by degrees until they start assuming the shape of the wearer's foot, adulthood has begun to feel familiar, if never entirely comfortable.

The Swarthmore alum looks back over a shoulder at the years passed in a nurturing nest of new faces, ideas, and countless "firsts." As they recede into the distance, those years can shimmer like a mirage of an oasis; it can seem remarkable that one was lucky enough to come upon such a place and drink so deeply, before continuing along life's journey.

But thanks to the written word, some graduates continue to quench their thirst through Swarthmore. By postcard and greeting card, wedding invitation, birth announcement, dashed-off note on monogrammed paper or company letterhead and now by that most expedient means of communication, e-mail--many relationships between professors and their former students are sustained. In a world that is not particularly nurturing, the urge to check back with a missive of gratitude, nostalgia, or sentiment can be strong.

The art of correspondence has always held an exalted position in the sphere of human relations. As Betsy Bolton, associate professor of English literature, noted via e-mail for this article: "In the early to mid-18th century, letter writing was privileged as something of a social art. Sample letters were printed in journals; women were said to be better letter writers than men, smoother in their construction of a written relationship."

How much fuller a picture we have of Emily Dickinson through her correspondence with editor Thomas Wentworth Higgins, through Robert Frost's fleshing out of his ideas about poems and the feedback he received from editor Louis Untermeyer? Gertrude Stein by reading the letters of Vita Sackville-West? Even Sartre's supercerebral heart must have pounded the faster when one of Simone de Beauvoir's heady missives arrived.

The openers to the following electronic communiqués, culled anonymously from actual alumni messages, sum up the mix of head and heart that characterize ongoing professor-student relationships:

I'm not sure if you remember me: I took your Whiteness and Racial Differences class.… I've come across a book that you may be interested in reading.

How are things? I can't imagine Swarthmore is much the same with the changes going on (though we both know the old saying about things staying the same)…. I've fallen in love with Robert Hayden again for an entirely different assortment of reasons. Particularly his hope (embedded in a neo-Platonism) and his unrushing dependent clauses. 

I am enjoying my job, and music is going well in Philadelphia. My current reading selection is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.… Next on the list is Airing Dirty Laundry by Ishmael Reed. Also, I am in the middle of Miles Davis' autobiography. Any new books for you?

For alumni who take the time to write, letters and e-mail can extend their education well beyond the tuition-paying years. As music major Ali Momeni '97 said of his frequent e-mail exchanges with the professor who sparked his interest in composition: "I'll tell you, since graduation, [Daniel Underhill Professor of Music] Jim Freeman has been an extremely kind and supportive presence in my life. I consider him a true friend as well as a great mentor, and I feel very lucky."

And for professors, watching former students mature into colleagues, peers, and friends can be incredibly satisfying. "What's great about getting letters from students is that it makes us aware of the trajectory here," said Provost and Centennial Professor of Anthropology Jennie Keith. "As faculty members, we often never know the long-term results of what we do. We never know what sticks or what makes a difference."

Don Swearer, Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor of Religion, maintains lively correspondences with several former religion majors. They range from annual family news swaps with John '76 and Donna Caliendo Devlin '78 to collegial exchanges with Anne Blackburn '88, Wendy Cadge '97, and several others. His experience echoes Keith's: "What's important isn't that we convey a body of knowledge but that we've made a difference in their lives. Being in touch regularly or sporadically confirms that."

The tone that weaves its way through the letters of recent graduates is often one of nostalgia, said Professor Peter Schmidt, who posts missives from near and far outside his office in the Department of English Literature:

Click here to view a larger photo of Prof. Peter Schmidt and Elsabeth Swim ’99.

[I]t's hard to look at all of those pictures of lovely wooded glades, soft gray buildings, and such without feeling both nostalgia and envy.

As much as I love it here in Santa Cruz [Calif.], I do miss the Swarthmore environment. 

Aside from wanting my exam back, it was also very pleasant to read an e-mail about Swarthmore-type things ... a reminder of connections much valued in this urban jungle I'm in.

Like many faculty members, Schmidt receives equal shares of personal notes and those addressed to several important Swarthmore contacts. Colorful travelogues mingle with requests for syllabi and recommendations, as in this e-mail sent both to Schmidt and his department colleague Professor Nathalie Anderson: 

Dear Guys: Hey, how are you both? How's the semester shaping up? Nat: the house? Peter: the "guys-who-aren't-dead-yet" course?... I'm down in the Missouri Bootheel working like crazy on a couple of different social service/community history projects. There are kids in my town (Canalou, Mo.) literally starving. Most of the older people have neither dentures nor teeth; 79 percent of the town's got health problems from the horribly contaminated water; the list goes on this way. Not the place to go for a getaway vacation, just in case anything possesses either of you to set foot in the rural Midwest.… I was wondering: I am applying for an internship ... with This American Life, a documentary (and funny) radio program.… They asked me for the names ... of a couple people who could tell them about my writing, fatal flaws, and all of that. Would you mind if I gave them yours? Hope you are doing well, writing some, and even rolling up the Weinstein's rug and shaking your respective groove things now and then--take good care.

--Mary Wiltenburg '98

This postcard to Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Professor of English Literature Chuck James and his wife, Jane, also goes beyond mere news:

Oye mi familia! This is only a slice of Mexico City. It is huge (28 million), the largest city in the world. And it is beautiful--pollution and all. The racism is horrendous though. And the sad part about it is that everyone is so busy trying to be a second-world country and the leader of South America to the point that they--the Indians who suffer the most all the way to the Guerros, light-skinned Mexicans and whites--feel it is a small price to pay. Of course, everywhere you go in the world as a black, you are faced with the daily struggles of your difference. Even though some people know they're descendants of Moors, Mayans, Aztecs, and Spaniards--everyone wants to be white. Go figure. I am surviving on this lonely planet though. Peace. Love,

--Keelyn Bradley '99

The following group letter, beamed out by Elisabeth Swim '99 to several faculty members and friends in the hours following last fall's earthquake in Taiwan, where she is teaching English, illustrates Peter Schmidt's idea that students stay in touch with professors as they might with family. Schmidt thinks they come to regard professors as a "weird blend of parent and sibling. They've been to your house, your home, so there's a bond there--maybe more like a grandparent." Swim wrote to let her Swarthmore "family" know that she had survived the tremors, going on to describe one of her jobs in vivid detail:

Between the tea/stationery store, there is a copy shop owned by Mr. Hoang, who I call "Hoang shu-shu." His wife and children come over every weekend to hang out, and the Chiang family and Hoang family seem to be extended parts of each other. On the other side of the copy store from us, there is a window to the school with iron grating that has been worn away in one spot, so there is a hole about the size of my forearm that we slip papers and drinks through to customers at their lunch and between-class breaks. It feels clandestine and exciting. Whenever it doesn't require any Chinese, when I'm around, I help run orders back to the students, and it makes me feel like I'm in a movie or something. It seems like something that should be forbidden.

Schmidt says that his teaching load causes his replies to be "relatively terse," but that he considers it a privilege to participate, however vicariously, in the lives of young grads. "I want to say that mail coming in from all over the world really makes me feel like a homebody," Schmidt wrote about his ongoing relationships with students. "Folks can travel so freely when they're in their early 20s; I sort of envy them."

Still others expressed gratitude directly. In a handwritten note, Heather Schwartz '99 followed specific thanks to Chuck James for writing her a recommendation with this more spontaneous outpouring. "I would like also to thank you just for everything. Perhaps you feel that you've not done all that much, but I disagree. I've appreciated so much over the past year or so the advice (or advising) you've given me."

Economics major Phil Neiman '85, now in investment banking in San Rafael, Calif., dropped James notes in longhand as he meandered his way from Wall Street to different law schools through the late 1980s:

Ninety-plus [hours] per week ... the first quarter just ended; nothing like The Paper Chase in terms of pressure and nothing like Swarthmore in terms of mental challenge or excitement.

A more recent note told James:

I thought you might like to know that your teaching stays with some of us long after Swarthmore: I named my kitten Buck, after London's dog, to whom I was introduced in your naturalism course. (The apartment is a bit small for a real Buck.)

Neiman recalled by phone that he is quite sure he was not James' most scintillating student but has stayed in touch anyway because "there was something about him. We clicked. At that age, when you haven't had a lot of life experience, it's not a given our ideas are going to be given a lot of weight. He let me go out on a limb without constraining me."

Like so many others, Neiman regrets that he fell out of touch with Swarthmore when earning a living and raising a family became his priorities. But professors say that they do hear occasionally from students after a lapse of years, as in this word of thanks from Jenny Oldstone-Moore '83, a Swarthmore religion major who was finishing a Ph.D. in the history of religions. She contacted Don Swearer for advice on traveling to Thailand:

To view a larger version of Prof. Don Swearer and Jenny Oldstone-Moore click here.

I enjoy thinking about the gifts both you and Kaori [Kitao, William J. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art History] have given me that made Swarthmore wonderful and that have lasted well beyond college years.

If an alumna or alumnus and a professor are going to do more than touch base but really stay connected, it is often because the student has pursued the same profession and is on his or her way to becoming a peer. Chuck James continues to correspond with David Larzelere '93, who as an editor of the new Granger's Index to African-American Poetry (Columbia University Press), called on his former professor to provide suggestions for the anthology. He took the opportunity to recall times spent together, both in and out of James' Modern Black Fiction Honors seminar:

I hope you and your family are well, [and] that the elysian fields of my alma mater are peaceful and green. You know, I still have vivid memories of seminar dinner at your ... house, where I met your sharp and charming wife and was royally fed and listened to music afterward in the living room--as I recall, a live Clifford Brown album that I'd never heard and haven't since. I must say, it remains the best gumbo I ever had--no doubt about it.

James has also corresponded with Edward Varga '91, who tracked down the professor's e-mail address after arriving in Oregon to teach high school English and American literature. All it took to open the descriptive sluice gates was a simple question from James, "How are you liking the teaching profession, Ed?"

Varga, who teaches in a farming-going suburban town whose mentality is far removed from the Portland schools where he student-taught, replied:

The physical environment: 90 percent of the classrooms in our school are windowless. Ostensibly this is due to the "east winds"; the more cynical understanding is that in 1968 somebody saved someone a heap o' dough. The spiritual environment: the Christian right, homophobic, conservative atmosphere can be both stifling and inspiring. When the football players call themselves "The Clan" and claim that the [capital] C makes all the difference, I think, "I need to be here."

Varga maintains a more regular interchange with Associate Professor of Education Lisa Smulyan '76. Thanks to e-mail, Varga has been able to draw on his former professor in regular doses, a resource he found especially valuable as he struggled to find his place in the conservative community. Smulyan shared from her own teaching experiences to lend him perspective:

To view a larger photo of Prof. Lisa Smulyan. 

Dear Ed: It sounds like you have your hands full. Did you know what you were getting into when you went to teach at this school? I know there sometimes isn't a lot of choice, but you might consider looking for a school whose philosophy more closely matches yours.… My guess is that people feel threatened, and that over time they will bother you less as they see you aren't going to make them feel worthless or wrong.... In my first teaching job, I was almost fired in October, cried my way through November, and was doing pretty well by January. I hope things even out for you at an even more rapid pace. Cheers, Lisa

Varga, who said in a phone interview that he was "still looking for a type of parental guidance from Swarthmore" in his early days of teaching, wrote to Smulyan in February 1998:

Just saying hello. I'm learning. I don't want to know all of this, but I'm learning. My mother always led me to believe that my father [a teacher] was just being negative when he came home complaining and griping about the administration or reform.… It seems to me as I trip over the bags beneath my eyes that there is plenty to take issue with regarding "standards reform" and truth from those in Salem, as they say here in Oregon.

Grueling as it was, Varga wrote in May 1998 to tell Smulyan that he was going back for more the next fall. Smulyan replied:

I'm glad you've decided to put in another year. I think you'll find that some of the energy ... that was used this year just to survive will be available to you for more of the things you want to be doing.… I'm amazed that you still reflect back on School and Society [Smulyan's course]. Somehow I assume out of sight, out of mind with my courses. I'm always surprised when students refer back to them! It does feel good though--thanks. Life is unduly crazy right now. First, it has rained for 12 days straight. Now I know that you Oregonians are used to that, but I'm starting to feel soggy. Second, last Monday, Amanda [Smulyan's daughter, then 7 years old] put her arm through a glass door pane--5 hours in the ER and 37 stitches later, I'm starting to recover too--probably the most horrendous thing I've ever lived through.... Take care--do something nice to reward yourself for getting through the first year of teaching. You'll never have another one, you know!

Smulyan had been candid all along about her challenges to balance her family and teaching demands, her struggles with her health, even sharing amusing anecdotes about her kids. Varga followed suit by taking a turn for the reflective in a letter early in 1999, suggesting that he had mastered teaching enough to muse on his personal life:

My birthday's in a month, and I'm going to get a guitar. I need to play guitar and speak Spanish before I die, so I need to get a move on. This is my 30th birthday, the first true sign of impending age. I'm not old, but I finally get the concept that I will actually grow older. You don't have to feel sorry for me; you just have to humor me…. Teachers die and thrive by the switching of consciousness from student to student. The day flies when I have four million "important" conversations ... with students. That's the part I love. That's also the part that wants rest.

Smulyan observes that teaching future educators lends itself to staying in touch because there is no way around the early blunders and fog of first-year teaching but to get through it. A little moral support is always needed.

To view a larger photo of Prof. Joy Charlton, click here.

Nearly unanimously, professors repeat that it's never too late to get in touch. If you're thinking that a favorite professor will not remember you, or worry that you've been away too long and there's too much to say, or think your life has been too uneventful, write anyway. Right away. As Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean Joy Charlton noted: "Getting letters sustains you in what you do as a teacher. We all have moments when we say, 'Is this worth the effort? Am I making a difference?' Everyone needs to know their work is valuable, and this is definitely one way of finding out. Really, it feels like a gift."

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