Thanks

The self-made person is a trope that is always at least half a lie. There’s something more than a bit off-kilter about the braggart who claims they alone are responsible for all their achievements. It’s one thing to accept credit for hard work and achievement. But another to seize all the glory.

Heck, we even owe debts of gratitude to our enemies. They make us stretch our abilities to counter their efforts to destroy us. I’d never get up at an awards ceremony and humbly thank my worst enemy for encouraging my success. But I can think of one or two that made me stretch out a bit further on the final lap if only to beat the hell out of them. I’ll take a second to applaud them now – you know who you are. I see you out there in the dark.

It’s much more important to credit the people who made permanent and positive impacts on our lives. In my case, one turned out to be a former professor who continued to believe in me at a time when my self-doubt ran high. 

It started as a rocky relationship. He gave me a C+ for a course at Boston University. I had a 3.9 cumulative grade point average, was the Phi Beta Kappa Orator in my junior year, and was expected to be elected to the honor society. His reason for the grade? Not the quality of my work but a life lesson. My ego was outsized, and I needed to have my sails trimmed if I was going to stay on course. The mark in an elective course would not affect my selection to grad school, my graduation cum laude, or anything else. It would bring me up short, make me evaluate things, and have a serious conversation with him about where I was going in anthropology. A few years later, we repeated the discussion with feeling, and he helped save my career.

I left grad school short of my doctorate. My immediate plight was unemployment, and then I spent about two years working in the Operating Room as a surgical Technician. I was living proof of the Old saying, “He who the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.” 

At the end of 1980, I landed my first professional job, not one in which the title was anthropologist, but one that required the skills of an anthropologist and where the selection required a postgraduate degree in anthropology( I had a master’s at this point). If I had been expecting congratulations from my peers in the field, I soon discovered that many thought the job unworthy, not suited, or not genuinely anthropological.

The only person in the field who completely supported and encouraged me was my nemesis from Boston University. He dragged me into a social science discussion group he held at home, offered advice, and wholeheartedly supported me.

Thanks, Anthony Leeds; I could not have done it without you.

Photo of a carving found in Shelbourne Falls, MA artist unknown.

Daily writing prompt

Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

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