Responsibilities

by Anne Tirone

The difference between being eighteen, nineteen, and being whatever I am - a mature adult! - is that you handle things better. I have more self-confidence. I'm gutsier. I've had responsibilities that made me gutsier. Raising four children and a husband. You know, just having life experience makes you react to things differently.

The first time I ever walked into the history department, a professor was going out as I was going in. He gave me a friendly, "Hello, how are ya, can I help you?" It was Norrie Baker, who teaches British history. It's a very friendly department, and Norrie has since become a good friend.

For my general exams before writing the dissertation, I had to have three different areas, my major area and two minor areas. I had Norrie Baker for the British. Jonathan Dewald, my advisor, does French history, Early Modern France. I had Gail Radford for American, and she's sensational. These three people, above all, were kind.

Because I am in such a different place than other students, they were kind, and they were also patient. I had all this stuff going on. I had a family. I had a mother who became ill; she developed lung cancer, and I spent six years driving back and forth from Buffalo to Warsaw - that's an hour each way. She came up here on two separate occasions to stay with us, because she had to have radiation therapy. So every day for six weeks I took her in for radiation therapy.

At the time, the history department had a course to prepare students for general exams prior to writing the dissertation. You read, you went in and discussed, and you had to write papers. I remember one semester Gail gave me Richard Hofstadter to read. A difficult book. It took me the whole semester to read Richard Hofstadter, and that's not the way it's supposed to work.

I had to sit down at the end of the semester and talk about Richard Hofstadter. Gail asked me questions, and I couldn't answer one of them. I was mortified. Afterwards, we realized what was going on. I was in a huge state of grieving. I continued to study for my exams, and Gail continued to help me until she went on sabbatical. Then I had another professor in the department, Susan Cahn, who is wonderful. I learned so much from her.

After I passed my exams, I went down and gave cookies to everybody in the library, because they had all been so helpful. Two who were exceptionally helpful were Mike and Paul at Circulation. Paul is a student - I just found that out - and always just goes the extra mile. And the reference librarians were terrific - Dorothy, Gail, Jean. I really like those people. I brought my granddaughter into the library. She screamed her brains out and scared Paul to death.

My mother died in '96 and I am still not over that.