A Special Visit

In my first few years of teaching I had a bunch of students who had a profound impact on me. They taught me that I love to teach, and I will always be grateful to them for that. A handful of them hold a very special place — near and dear — deep down in my heart. I’ve always had favorites; students who have captured my heart and inspired me to go the extra mile; students who become unforgettable for one reason or another. But those first few ‘special students’ of mine are irreplaceable– they really do stand out as extraordinarily instrumental in shaping who I am, as a professor, today. To say I have a permanent soft spot for them is an understatement. At the tippy top of that list is my old student Oscar Guerrero.

During his Lehigh days, everyone on campus called Oscar “The Big O.” He was the biggest and sweetest guy I’d ever met. I was this tiny, brand new, professor. He was this huge, extremely popular, football player. We bonded over the sociology of race and class and education and inequality. By the time he graduated I knew him, and his girlfriend Jessica (now wife; due next month with their first baby!), and many of their friends, very well. During Oscar’s senior year Braydon and I were in the process of adopting Kyle and Owen. And then they came home, and Oscar got to know K & O a bit when he’d come back to Lehigh to visit Jessica (she was still a senior). That became another thing we bonded over: Oscar, like many of my students over the years, had a soft spot for my sons. And they shared the island of Hispaniola in common (Oscar is Dominican).

When we were choosing names for K & O, we chose “Owen” with Oscar in mind. In the photos we’d receive from Haiti, Owen always looked bigger than Kyle. Long before we got K & O home we always knew we’d call Owen “The Big O,” and this conjured up all sorts of warm and fuzzy and good feelings for me… my special student’s namesake.

Today Oscar came for a visit. I won’t go on and on and on about all the incredible things that he’s doing with his life, and how incredibly proud I am of this guy. Just trust me, it is awe-inspiring. Just a short visit with the original ‘Big O’ reminded me of just why I developed that soft spot for him in the first place. And it also reminded me that I have the best job in the world: To get people to think, and then to be able to watch all the incredible things they go and do with that?! What could possibly be better?

{Sidenote: We have this picture of Oscar holding Kyle when the boys were about 16 months old. Today I made sure we re-did it with a now smiling (and much bigger!) Ky Ky!}