Epically Unbelievable

I started a Twittter thread some months ago about me graduating with a BA and MA just two years after high school, then getting a perfect score on the GRE and getting a full ride scholarship to a PhD program at Princeton in German Literature at age 19.

This woman named “Holly” then proceeded to get into a very loud and extended Twitter argument with me and then with my Twitter friends (after I blocked her when she snidely implied that I was lying because why would someone who had a PhD work in a call center for peanuts haha!). As Twitter enters its twilight phase, this is one of my favorite memories of the kinds of things that happened there.

Here's a brief transcript of some of the Tweets:

Holly: that’s actually impossible

Me: I assure you, it’s true.

Holly: I do not believe this is possible unless BYU has lesser standards for degrees than other universities.

Friend: *defends me by saying that actually, I’ve done lots of impossible things and you can look at my Wikipedia page and my website to see evidence*

Me: *posts letter of acceptance from BYU dated April 1988, then also MA graduation certificate dated August 1990 and acceptance letter into Princeton’s PhD program*

Holly: I want proof!

Me: I just gave you proof.

Holly: I maintain it is not possible to graduate with a BA and MA in two years.

Me: I’m amused by your disbelief. It makes my accomplishment seem even more epic. Thank you for the compliment.

This would not be such a pleasant memory for me except for what happened next. Because one of my students from BYU, after I returned from Princeton with a PhD at age 25, pregnant with my second child, remembered me. I had a couple of students in my class at the time who had gone to high school with me, and it was a little awkward to explain that yes, I was a professor and yes, I had a PhD and was not just a graduate student teaching the class. I don’t think that it helped that I am very small in stature (5’2”). It definitely didn’t help that I was 6-8 months pregnant during the summer class and teaching at a very patriarchal university where multiple male students told me repeatedly that I had no standing to grade them as a woman and that I should be at home with my children, since a woman’s place was in the home.

Heather O: Wait, did you teach German at BYU for a summer when you were pregantn? I had a German prof who was super young and had a PhD at 25 and I was super confused how she did it so fast. I don’t remember her name, but she was super small, like you.

Me: Yes, that has to have been me.

Heather: OMG. I can’t believe it. You once suggested there was truth outside the church and a student walked out in protest and that’s when I knew BYU was not for me (except for you I thought YOU were AWESOME.)

Me: Wow. I literally do not remember that. Go old me. (I do remember students being unhappy with me and thinking I was a lousy teacher).

Heather: You did a diagram and everything. Like the church has the MOST truth, but not all of the truth. I had never heard a Mormon talk like that. It sort of blew my mind.

I can't tell you how much this exchange lifted my spirits. I really had thought of my handful of years at BYU as an utter failure. I’d applied for a full-time position and hadn’t even made the top three, despite having finished by PhD at one of the top universities in the country, compared to others who hadn’t finished. I was infuriated and refused to teach again as a lowly adjunct, though I was offered the chance to continue to be exploited. I thought that my legacy had been constant arguments with the department chair about male students who treated me badly and arguments about my grading scale being too difficult.

I had worked very hard at the classes and had been so discouraged and overwhelmed by the work and constant disrespect and had decided that it was time for me to work on a goal it felt I could have more control in succeeding at: becoming a full-time fiction writer. (Within five years, I had a book deal with a national publisher, so I wasn’t entirely crazy about this.)

I don't remember this experience that Heather O. told me about, me telling students that there was truth outside of Mormonism, nor do I remember the diagram that I drew. But I'm beyond happy to know that old Mette was pushing barriers back then and that I would have agreed with her, as far as she went in telling her truth.

Sometimes I am hard on my younger self, angry that she made so many apparently bad choices that have led to the many problems I have now. But then there are moments when I feel this perfect sense of congruence, that I see my new self in her, and then I am proud of myself and feel like perhaps my new life and my old life are not so different, after all.