It was hard not to be starstruck by Susan Tifft at first. I was too shy to take the initiative to really get to know her when she was my professor last spring, her final semester at Duke. Yet her devotion to her craft was so great that each one of us in her class--even those who stole a seat at the far end of the table--was convinced a small part of her was ours. She has impacted me more than she knew.
I felt this more strongly the day our class coincided with the arrival of spring in Durham. Professor Tifft always guided class discussions with razor-sharp focus. But on this day, in the heat of a discussion about Swiss banks, she and I took note of a desperately lost inchworm. Our gaze met as we watched the creature creep down the table, and she smiled at me with her eyes. During the mid-class break, we coaxed the insect onto a sheet of paper and ushered it into the open air where it belonged. She had been feeling very zen as of late, she confessed to me. The exchanged reminded me that she loved not only the news but also poetry.
Professor Tifft lectured on journalism, a format that is prisoner to time, never more so than now with the advent of the 24-hour cycle. But what she taught us is eternal.
Julia Love
Trinity '11
Chronicle columnist
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