By Wendy K. Mages
I’m glad Barbara, my thesis advisor, prefers incandescent lamps to florescent lights. Her office is dimly lit; I can hide my shame in darkness.
“I can’t do it,” I confess. “I worked so hard to submit my qualifying paper. I hoped to submit my dissertation proposal, too. But I’m exhausted.”
I’m disappointed in myself, but disappointing Barbara, who’s been there for me through family tragedies and academic quagmires, is devastating.
“You still have a week before it’s due,” she says.
“Can I write it in a week?”
“You might as well try.”
Barbara believes I can….
And, so I do.
Wendy K. Mages, a Mercy University Professor, is a Pushcart Prize nominee and an award-winning poet and author. She earned her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and her master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a complement to her research on the effect of the arts on learning and development, she performs at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. To learn more about her and her work, and to find links to her published stories and poetry, please visit her Mercy University Faculty page https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages and her website, Wendy Mages: Storyteller https://sites.google.com/view/wendy-mages-storyteller
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