The last time I spoke with Professor Lepgold was about two weeks before Thanksgiving.
It was just around the time that pre-registration was due and I had just gotten an e-mail reminding School of Foreign Service upperclassmen that they needed to have their faculty mentor sign their meeting confirmation slip or they would not be allowed to pre-register. I took the elevator up to the sixth floor of the ICC and made my way to the far corner.
Normally I would have e-mailed a few days in advance and set up a time to meet. However, this semester I was busy, and there was only one class I needed for my major so I was not too concerned about meeting with my adviser. I was just hoping to catch him in his office.
I knocked on the door and waited. I was about to leave when he answered. He looked perplexed, but that sort of went well with his office, where he usually had to rearrange papers and folders for me to sit. I asked if he could sign my slip and he said yes.
He said he couldn’t talk. I said I would e-mail him and check my schedule. He told me to come by next week and we would meet in person. I never did either one.
I first met Professor Lepgold the spring of my sophomore year. I knew I wanted to major in international politics, but I didn’t know anyone who I wanted to be my faculty mentor. I e-mailed him for suggestions and he said that I should come in and meet with him.
I went in and he started asking me about what I was interested in studying. I said I had taken a really interesting comparative politics class and that I found China interesting. He said there was a great professor who specialized in Asian security. I also said I had a great course about emerging security threats, transnational crime and terrorism. He said there was another great professor who specialized in nontraditional security threats. I told him I had another class about the Cuban missile crisis and I was really interested in traditional security threats. He said there was a great professor for that, too. I said maybe I would e-mail the professors. Then I paused.
He said that maybe the best thing I should do was to have him be my adviser, since my interests were so broad. I’ll never forget how he told me, “I probably won’t remember your name because I advise about half of the international security studies majors, but I will remember what you are doing and what your situations is.” I thought that was kind of strange, but to be honest, he made me feel comfortable. Maybe it was because he was short and not physically intimidating, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I felt as though he was interested in me as a person.
So I left having gotten him to sign the form that declared my major. We met several times over the next year. True to form, he didn’t remember my name, but when we started talking he always remembered what I was doing. During this time I was always worried that I was disappointing him. He would ask me about future plans. I went from being interested in law and government to NGOs, to Teach for America, to having absolutely no idea.
Then last spring, I took a class of his. I think for about three months, he might have known my name. He was a good teacher. He was so excited about what he was teaching that for a while, I wanted to do what he did. Sometimes I still think about it. He was so interested in his field that he would talk about how the principles of coercion, deterrence and power could be used in trying to get his son to clean his room or eat his vegetables.
Towards the end of that class, I met with him to talk about my schedule for the next semester. I went up to him with a print out of classes and some circles around ones I was interested in. He took my pen, crossed out the circles, made his own, and said, “These are classes that someone like you will like and learn something in.” At first I was kind of discouraged, but then I realized that he had given me a compliment and he wasn’t disappointed in me.
Later this was confirmed when I was talking to him about my future plans and how they had nothing to do with international politics. He asked me why I was majoring in it, and I said it was interesting. He laughed and said that he shouldn’t give me a bad time because that it was “they” tell us we are supposed to do. Incidentally, the three classes that he recommended where great and I learned a lot.
I don’t have an adviser now, and I am not sure I will get a new one since I graduate in May. I am sure that if I need anything I can talk to the deans. Unless they tell me I have to, I don’t plan to find somebody new.
Scott Sakiyama is a senior in the School of Foreign Service.
