Some years ago, my first real job out of my post-doc was a one year teaching stint at a Catholic womens college. The post-doc was rather less than a great experience. But that is a post for another time. I did get a couple of JACS papers, a Mendeleev Communications paper, a divorce, and one Org Synth publication out of it. And, I got to work with some smart folks I still consider to be among my closest friends.
The post-doc years were a time of deep personal turmoil. The divorce was traumatic. It affects one in ways that are hard to appreciate in advance. Mostly, it presents an indelible stamp of failure to the bearer. If it weren’t for friends that I made while in Texas, frankly I don’t know where I’d be today. The adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” does have some truth in it.
The Catholic school I taught in was associated with a major football presence in the midwest. The womens college was run by the same group of nuns who were connected with the coed university across the street so venerated by football enthsiasts. It had its own exit from the toll road, two lakes, two golf courses, and a mosaic of the Saviour declaring a touchdown.
I bought furniture from Father Clarence and slept on a priest bed (without the priest, blessedly) for my academic year under the employ of nuns. Such furniture was typically donated back for eventual resale. Father Clarence offered to sell me the two 35 mm projectors used to entertain the revered Four Horsemen. Like an idiot, I declined his offer and regret it to this day.
The nuns who ran this single gender institution were an aging population. Initiates were hard to find- apparently most came from South America. The Blessed Sisters eventually handed off the university so they could concentrate on their hospitals.
Even though I received paychecks from the Sisters, I rarely saw them. We did have a nun from a different order in our department. She was a pistol. And a biochemist. Her interest was infecting caterpillars with deadly caterpillar viruses. Strange game, this. Our Dean was a hoot- she looked and sounded just like Ethel Merman.
I taught a class of 95 students, all women. I recall looking out into a crowd of 19-22 year old women, most with poney tails protruding out from the back of baseball caps and peering at me under bills that were severely curled. It was a general chemistry for non-majors section populated by students who couldn’t get into biology or the popular “physics for poets” class. These hapless students ended up with me as a prof. What rotten luck.
One morning driving into work I was in a serious auto accident where I nearly rolled over my pickup. The patrolman graciously dropped me off at the college where I ran to the classroom 10 minutes late. Not a single one of the vicious little trolls waited for me to arrive. (After all, it says somewhere in the new testament that a student only has to wait 5 minutes for the prof.)
I took over a class previously taught by a fellow who had just died. His office was closed and untouched by a disinterested family. It was an odd experience- he was fresh in everyones mind except for mine.
The main recollection I have from the experience is that perhaps 1/3 of the students I knew were genuinely dismayed that men taught at the University. They would point out that it made no sense for a women’s institution to have male faculty. As a “person of gender”, it was hard for me to disagree. But I would also point out that of the remaining 2/3 that I spoke with, half were uncertain about the wisdom of attending an all womens institution. So, for me it is hard to draw conclusions about the merit of single gender institutions. From a marketing view, there is/was demand for this kind of school. But whether demand is from parents or students is less clear to me.
Lamentations on Chemistry 