called in to the Dean's office

This morning, as I was killing my daily allotment of trees at the copy machine, one of our Deans came up to me and asked if I would come to his office when I was finished.

"Uh-oh", I thought. "What did I do now?"

I finished what I was doing and headed to his office. It didn't occur to me at first, but when he started off by telling me that he is also a member of our religion department, I remembered that he's also a priest. Then I remembered the faculty meeting that we had last week, and my "coming out" to the rest of the religion department. He wasn't there that day, and must have just heard about it.

I really didn't need to get lectured by a priest this morning about my sexual identity. <deep breath>

He smiled and said how impressed he was that I went nose-to-nose with one of the teachers in my department who tends to have homophobic viewpoints. With all of the other religion teachers sitting there. "And for a first year teacher to do that," he added, "that took guts".

He shook my hand and thanked me again. And that was all he wanted.

I hadn't thought of it that way, and I didn't realize that this teacher was being homophobic. I just said what I needed to say. But it was nice to hear someone affirm that.

Another important teacher lesson: Never underestimate a priest.

Posted: Tue - September 30, 2003 at 12:24 PM

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called in to the Dean's office

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