Rebecca M. Muich

After graduating from Xavier in 2002 with an HAB and a major in history, I went on to get an MA in Classics at the University of Florida and a PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I hadn't really intended to make Classics my career, but after working so hard in the HAB program, I found it difficult to imagine doing anything else, and decided to keep going until I decided I had had enough. Eight years, three states, and one wedding later, I found myself back at Xavier as an assistant professor of Classics. I know live in Greensboro, NC and work as an academic adviser and programming coordinator for the Lloyd International Honors College at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Looking back now, I know that it was my growing love of teaching that was powering me through graduate school. Teaching Classics is its own reward, and finding new ways to present timeless material never gets boring. What I didn't really realize until I was teaching at XU myself was what an impact my HAB professors had on me as a student. Shannon Byrne, Edmund Cueva, Susan Shapiro, and other talented XU faculty were teaching me about Classics and everything else, of course, but they were also showing me the life: the ups and downs, the long hours, the hard work, the extra responsibilities, the pressures. As I got farther along in my career, I realized how lucky I was that my professors shared that part of their job with me and my classmates: they were persons with lives, not sages on stages, and that stuck with me. From the time when I started teaching up to this very day, as I advise students and walk them through their college careers, I try to be honest about who I am and what I can and can't do, and to let students know that it's okay to just be a person -- there's no need to be perfect. For better or worse, no other program at Xavier gives students that kind of access to their professors and mentors. We took our community for granted back then just like we likely do now, but it's good to look back and remember how our commitment to humanism and our willingness to suffer to ultimately achieve brought us all together. I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.