The Grand and Powerful Idea Inside Me

A Story of Lost Opportunities, Lingering Doubt, and Self-Discovery

I’ve been doing a lot of reflection lately about how I got to where I am. Certain past events have come into sharp focus.

The beginning of college was hard for me. I was painfully shy and awkward in high school, behind socially, and had limited financial means. My first year, I admit, I focused on learning how to dress, how to have friends, how to party, how to live. How to be a human being. With the help of friends, I became a somewhat fashionable girl who liked to goof off, speak in funny voices, and loudly and proudly share my opinions on everything—from where to get the best fried dill pickles to how to dance in public when you have two left feet (hint: you make it funny). Someone once said I knew about all the best parties, and I consider it a badge of honor to this day.

I got straight Bs. I never even took the cellophane off my books. But it was probably the most important year of my life. I learned to share myself with others.

By the second year, I had sowed my wild oats and gotten down to business. I openly and obnoxiously shared my thoughts on Thomas Hardy (a favorite author), my personal identification with Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (the subject of one of my first really, really good papers), made the President’s List, and worked for professors. They liked me, approached me to work with them, and encouraged me to declare for their major. I was in it to win it.

One day, I attended a soccer game and saw someone wearing a Millsaps shirt. All I could think was, I want to wear that, too. I decided to transfer. It was a larger school—a little harder to get into, a little more prestigious. They had sororities and fraternities. Students drove expensive cars and wore J.Crew clothing (there were no J.Crew stores in Jackson, Mississippi, at that time).

I applied. I was accepted.

The transfer was hard. I felt like I was starting from scratch. There was a cognitive leap I had to make in my thinking and writing, and it felt overwhelming. I developed a kind of writer’s block. As my world expanded again, socially and academically, I jumped from major to major like a kid in a candy store. The world wasn’t my oyster—it was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I was stuffing myself. My grades suffered that first year.

Luckily, I had an intuitive roommate who noticed me spending hours watching documentaries about cultures around the world, past and present. One day, while I was venting about my unhappiness with my current major, she said, “What you need to do is major in Anthropology.”

I had never heard of this field before.

“That’s what you sit around reading and watching all day. Anthropology.”

And that was it. I was on a roll!

I loved writing my mini-ethnographies. My first was called “The Men of Subway Lounge”—a basement blues club where you bought your own beer and concessions from a window next door. I wrote another about my experiences working as a (very bad) clerk typist for a federal government office.

There was a coveted fellowship that many of my friends had, including the roommate who encouraged me to pursue Anthropology as a major. It offered a stipend, a professor mentor, opportunities to lead classes and workshops, and a chance to work on a project of personal interest.

I wanted it, too.

I knew it was a long shot. My grades were a little low, I’d been a bit of a flake until recently, and I was a transfer student. But boy, did I have an idea!

I wanted to combine historical anthropology, pedagogy, creative writing, and journalism into one project. My plan was to choose a year from the not-so-distant past—say, the late 1800s—and explore how major historical events, the kind we read about in textbooks, might have been experienced in real time by people in a specific community. I envisioned creating a fictional town newspaper that would present these events alongside local news, advertisements, and announcements. My goal was to capture the feeling of living in time—to create a performative experience that could show how history isn’t just a series of distant facts but a living, breathing reality that can be brought to life for students.

I lined up my project sponsors, wrote my essay, and submitted my plan. I had hope.

My boyfriend at the time seemed supportive. He was a fellow himself, and seeing his success had inspired me to try.

Then, one day, I went to check on something with the fellowship administrator. I sat down, and she told me it was so funny—she had just been speaking to my boyfriend about me.

I sat up straight. “Why?” I asked.

She proceeded to tell me that he had come by the office just to talk about me. He was worried. He wanted to advise them not to give me the fellowship. He didn’t think I was a good fit. He didn’t believe I could handle it. He was certain I wouldn’t be successful in this venture.

I must have looked stunned because she leaned forward, her voice soft, assuring me that this was done out of love. It was so clear, she said, that he loved me deeply, profoundly—that he was only worried for me. I was lucky to have someone like him. I should hold on to that.

I started to cry.

I felt like I had been found out. He had come in and pulled back a curtain, and now everyone could see what a fraud I was.

She asked me if I wanted to withdraw my application. Didn’t I think that was for the best?

I didn’t know what to say. Withdrawing had never crossed my mind when I walked in just minutes before. I was there to make sure everything was moving forward.

She handed me a box of tissues to dry my eyes and wipe my nose. I told her I guessed that withdrawing would be for the best.

She agreed but assured me that I had really won. Staring into the middle distance, she said, “To have a love like that—well, you’re a lucky girl indeed.”

I nodded.

But then she added, almost as an afterthought, “It’s a pity, though. We really liked your application, you know, before we understood your situation.”

I left her office and somehow made it out of the building, down the steps, and past the area we called “the bowl,” where students gathered to talk or lay on blankets reading. Everyone seemed so happy, so secure in the knowledge that they deserved to be there—just as they were.

I wondered if my deficits were as obvious to them as they were to me.

But I felt angry, too. Why did everyone else deserve the benefit of the doubt? Why did I deserve the kind of love that holds you down—a gatekeeping kind of love?

I knew he had a class in a few minutes. I wanted to ask him why he had done this. I sat on the benches outside his classroom, waiting.

When he arrived, he was jaunty, notebook in hand, freshly washed and scrubbed, hair still a bit damp. Ready, as always, to do his very best. He smiled—a true smile, bright and happy to see me. Was I there to wish him good luck?

I told him about my conversation with the administrator. I asked him to explain why he had done this.

The answer was decidedly anything but love.

No, the answer was that I did not deserve that fellowship. I had, he reminded me, tearfully confided in him—in private—my fears about the fellowship. What if I got it and failed? So many people had gone to bat for me. This, he said, was proof that I couldn’t handle the challenge.

He had discussed this with his best friend, another fellow—they both agreed. He needed to step in. He “needed to save his friends from me.” I would ruin the fellowship for others. I might take it from someone deserving.

He was angry now. He knew better.

I listened, and then I said one thing:

"I’m your friend."

"What?" he said.

"I’m your friend. You did this to your friend. Your friend who loves and cares about you. I confided in you as a friend, and you took advantage of that."

He said nothing. He had to go; I had interrupted him before his exam. How was he supposed to perform well now?

Anyway, he said, it was all for the best.

And why, you might wonder, am I thinking about this now, 26 years later?

I think it’s because, after so many false starts—trying over and over to prove to myself that I could succeed on every road except the one I first tried to carve out for myself all those years ago—I am now doing work so similar to that project I pitched back then.

When my students imagine and act out a debate between Tesla and Edison, pretending to be concerned mothers and fathers or tech enthusiasts of that time, they recognize how scary AC must have been when Edison was telling them it would kill their pets, kill them. I am doing that performative history work I once dreamed of. When they act in, produce, and film a low-budget Gilgamesh: An Epic Bromance, they find humor and love not so different from something you might see in a Will Ferrell comedy.

I don’t blame him for what he did. We were kids. He was going through his own issues. He believed he was right. He was upholding a standard, and in his eyes, I fell short.

But I still carry a muscle memory of that conversation.

And I work to train my heart to beat a different rhythm—one that says: I am worthwhile. I am worth the risk.

I tell my students to speak about themselves in declarative sentences:
"I will succeed. I can write this paper. I do have a big and grand and powerful idea growing inside me."

Now, I think it may be time to say it to myself.