The University of Minnesota Twin Cities

Date: Dec 31 1969
Major: Language - French/Spanish/etc. (This Major's Salary over time)
I basically enjoyed my time at the U. I transferred from a small,elite women's college in the East to attend as an undergraduate because I wanted to major in Scandinavian Studies. I went on to get my MA in Scandinavian too. This department is now, I understand, part of the Germanic Studies department, or something like that. I found everyone at the women's college I transferred from to be bright and interesting, even if I didn't like them; but at the U, I found a number of dull and uninteresting students, mostly among the undergraduates. There were, of course, enough of the bright and interesting students to make the whole thing acceptable anyway. Unfortunately, I found my chosen department to have a few professors who were quite disfunctional; my undergraduate advisor was an alcoholic misogynist. There were others there who resented women, I don't know why; but they didn't always treat us women graduate students like we had a brain. There were others in the department who were not at all like that, fortunately. One of them, a natural diplomat and man of high integrity, went on to become the president of the U. I got a good education, but the disfunctional faculty didn't make it easy for us; sometimes it seems as if they were actually witholding help by what they didn't share. They were simply quite self-focused and arrogant. I found excellent support from fellow graduate students, and I loved much of the material that I worked with. I was able to be a TA, and that was a wonderful experience.