Portland Magazine
June 9, 2021
By Claire Lang
Illustration by Jason Sturgill
2037 BERRY STREET. Grey walls, a rainy window. My red flowered quilt, pictures from a previous time. It’s the view I see every day. I sit at my teal desk, rubbing my eyes because all I ever do anymore is look at my computer screen. I know I should be thankful that I’m in school and still learning, yet I can’t help but wonder what I’ll actually retain from another semester of online classes. I ask myself almost every day how I’ll make it to Winter Break. Each Friday night, the idea of throwing my MacBook out my third-story window sounds more appealing than it did the week prior.
Monday and Wednesday at 4:10, however, everything changes. I’m not tired anymore. I’m thrilled at the opportunity to learn. To listen. To be taught. I pretend I’m in a real classroom, with real people, making real connections. Suddenly, I’m not sitting in my room, at my teal desk, looking out my window at the rain. I’m in a new, refreshing environment that isn’t draining or tiring. It’s the closest thing to a real classroom that I’ve experienced in months.
After two consecutive semesters, I’ve never met her. I don’t know how tall she is, or what her mannerisms are like in real life. I don’t know if she talks with her hands or if she paces back and forth across the classroom as she lectures. I don’t know what it would be like to be in the same physical space. All I know is what I’ve seen from the tiny Zoom box labeled “Alexandra Hill.” I know that every day at 5 p.m., her dogs bark at the door and she laughs and says, “Ah! Die Post ist da! ” I know that she genuinely cares for the students she teaches and that she doesn’t work for the paycheck.
After fewer than two semesters, I already know that she’ll be one of the professors I look back on and tell my kids about. On September 14 at 4:10 p.m., I came to this realization. It seems that the times in which one is faced with challenges are the most revealing of character. In early September, the West Coast erupted in devastating wildfires that spread through California, Oregon, and Washington, destroying everything in their paths. Childhood homes were burned, forests were torched, people were killed. Smoke suffocated every community for hundreds of miles. Instead of wishing us the best and continuing on with the lecture, we talked about it. As a class, as a community. She listened. It wasn’t some grand gesture or seminar; it was a simple question. She asked, “Are you okay?” It was not the kind of question that warrants an “I’m fine.” No. She wanted to know what was on our minds, what our weeks had been like. She wanted to know how we had been impacted, if everyone we love was safe. She wanted to know the small things that were holding us down and opened up the class time for a discussion about our feelings. A space to rant. A space to cry. All in a Zoom meeting. That is the kind of professor she is, the kind who makes someone feel heard and appreciated and loved without having to say it.
This is what distinguishes a good educator from a great one: an unspoken mutual appreciation. It wasn’t just September 14 that felt like that. It was September 16, and October 21, and January 25, and April 5, and every day in between. It was each and every time I signed in to German 302, and each and every time I joined Alexandra Hill’s Personal Meeting room. Truth be told, I can’t tell you a specific moment that shows how Dr. Hill is the reason educators are so important, because every moment I’ve spent in her virtual classroom has reflected that. I feel heard and appreciated over Zoom, and it takes a special person to do that. So, thank you, Dr. Hill, for being the professor I never knew I needed.
Claire Lang just finished her first year at UP. She is double majoring in Political Science and German.
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