After 33 years of teaching at the university, English professor Kelly Messinger is retiring. Messinger has worn many hats over her years as a professor, including advisor of the Chimes and vice president for the College Media Association.
Messinger was granted tenure in 2002 at the university, and before that worked in news rooms, high schools and worked a year in a middle school, which she jokingly called “the longest ten years of [her] life.”
While she saw herself as both a journalist and an educator, at the university, Messinger said she’s an educator first. She enjoyed teaching and working with newspapers, but said with teaching, she was able to “affect lives and make more change directly as opposed to writing headlines.”
In her years of teaching, Messinger found that as an educator, one “must have compassion and empathy” and must change with the times. She mentioned that in the 90s, mental health and LGBTQ+ issues weren’t talked about as much as they are now—a reason to change with the times.
She said she’s also learned that she needs to be more flexible than she used to be in her earlier days, meaning she’s understanding that “life happens” and she needs to meet students where they are to help with their situations in feasible ways.
When asked what she would’ve changed about her experience, Messinger said that when she was younger, she wouldn’t have been so strict or stiff with her rules, and said she would have been more forgiving—again, because “life happens.”
In over 30 years, Messinger has witnessed a lot. On September 11, 2001, she remembered there was no teaching going on; the campus was silent as people gathered around televisions to watch the news.
Another memory Kelly mentioned was when a “zombie invasion” hit the university in 2017, an event she worked to organize.
This was a crisis scenario to see how public relations (PR) students would respond in a crisis. As PR students were covering a live rock band performance on campus, theater students came out as zombies. Journalists, film students and PR students were all trying to assess what was happening as the zombies went around and “infected” people.
Once infected, Messinger said, students were sent to a “quarantine tent” where they quickly put on makeup and joined the other zombies. Messinger mentioned the entire campus was in on it—science students were trying to develop a cure, while nursing students were doing first aid.
This scenario helped students learn to work in real time, preparing them for real world situations.
After retirement, Messinger intends to travel and move somewhere where she doesn’t have to worry about ice.
She also plans to volunteer to help out those with breast cancer. She wants to repay those who helped her during her journey with breast cancer.
When talking about her cancer, Messinger recalled that although it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, her students found ways to show they cared. She found gifts on her porch, including once when she found beef and noodle stew on her steps. She was “flabbergasted” that her students, and even alumni, cared so much.
She hopes that she’s shown students they can work together compassionately towards their goals. She wants students to be aware of other’s strengths and weaknesses and how they can use them to their advantage in teams.
As for parting advice, Messinger said “put down your phones, take a walk, talk to people, experience life, find a major you like and hopefully a job or career will follow.”
She isn’t pessimistic about the future—she’s seen many students that want to make something of themselves.
The thing she emphasized most was having compassion and empathy above all. After all, “life happens.”
