‘The Shaman’s Apprentice’

(…) There are no words for the enormous sense of loss I feel today. People are often told to ‘smile because it happened,’ not to ‘cry once it’s over.’ But I couldn’t hold it together today. And as I write this, I still feel the tears sliding down my face. This semester, I had the incredible privilege of being one of the last students of a kind of scholar that the academy is slowly losing.

He preferred hard copies of his students’ work. He encouraged us to be realistic about the U.S., and our economic systems, but not cynical. He remembers and identifies ‘Occupy Wall Street’ as a unique moment in American history: as do I.

And over the course of a semester at a small, but formidable gem of an institution in South Texas: I was honoured with his friendship. He took me seriously. And I’ve never felt that before.

He’s leaving South Texas this Sunday for Massachusetts, with his wife. And in his farewell speech to his students, he talked about owning land in Wisconsin. Knowing him, he’s totally satisfied with his career and is ready to take it slow.

In the midst of a semester where at times it felt like my work, inside and outside of the classroom, would ultimately amount to nothing: the opposite was true.

I now anticipate that I may enter journalism instead of the academy. But under every story I may write in the future, in an ideal world, there would be the following line:

For my mother, for Vina, and for Dr. Reed:

‘The Shaman’s Apprentice’