One of the most heartwarming things an old professor can receive are unbidden messages from his former students telling him how much his classes had affected them. Since retiring from teaching thirty years ago, I have been the grateful recipient of many such messages. I used to keep a scrapbook of them, but that’s now in my archive. But I’d say that over the years, I’ve probably received at least a couple of dozen of such tributes. They often say things like, “your course was the best I ever took” or “your course changed my life” or, like the one I just received the other day, “Big hello, Professor Ring. I took your classes (Part 1 and Part 2) back in 1986 and found them so thought provoking. Recently enjoyed re-reading my journal from the class.”
Other former students had become scholars or professors or had gone on to attain doctorates or other advanced degrees. A couple of ex-students led very unusual and adventurous lives exploring altered states of consciousness in exotic locales. Still others, once they had reconnected with me, became my friends and corresponded frequently. Two ex-students still write me every Christmas, and so on.
I feel very blessed to know that my classes (and books) have deeply touched so many of my students’ lives. And I’m so grateful to those who took the time to tell me so.
The other day when I received the comment I quoted above, I got to thinking about the teachers who had affected me or who had in one way or another become my mentors.
The first teacher to take a personal interest in me was a woman named Evelyn Murray. She taught English in my junior high school. She was my teacher in the 7th grade when I would have been about thirteen. For her class, we had to write our “autobiography.” I still have mine, and of course its pathetic juvenalia made me cringe when I re-read it. But Miss Murray, as I always called her, must have seen something in me because she encouraged me in my writing. She even invited me to her home a couple of times. I have never forgotten her kindness and personal support for my fledging efforts. I think she may have been the one who first planted the seed in me to become one day the writer she thought I had in me to achieve.
I had other wonderful teachers in junior high and high school, but the only one I will mention here is a man, Mr. Billings, who was a high school teacher. In my final semester, we had to take a course called something like “social problems,” that was supposed to prepare us for life after school.
At the time, I had no idea what to do after I graduated. No one in my family had ever gone to college, so I asked my best friend, Stanley Northey, about his plans. "I’m going to Cal," he said. So, okay, I thought, maybe that’s what I should do. That’s what I told Mr. Billings, who, like Miss Murray, had taken a personal interest in me. He was pleased with my decision and told me to "keep in touch," which I did. On Mr. Billings, more later.
When I got to Cal, I asked my friend Stan what he was going to major in. "Accounting," he said. Since I was always good with numbers, I decided I would follow his lead. But Fate had other ideas.
When I was a freshman, I took an introductory psychology class. It was in Wheeler Hall, which had a capacity of 600, and it was packed. Our professor was a diminutive man named Dr. David Krech (probably short for Krechevsky or something like that). Krech was such a dynamic and enthralling teacher that I was bowled over. His lectures were so compelling that students would burst into applause when he concluded. Unheard of! Other professors would sometimes be applauded at the end of a course, but only Krech in my experience was applauded at the end of his classes. I was hooked. Krech made me switch majors to psychology. I once encountered him as he was leaving the Life Sciences Building. "I’m in your class," I burbled. He waved at me. He was my hero.
I went back to my high school to tell Mr. Billings I had changed majors. I was going to become a psychologist.
"Don’t do it," he warned. "You’ll never get a job." I didn’t listen or take his advice. I knew what I wanted.
But I had other outstanding professors during my undergraduate years at Cal. Their names wouldn’t mean anything to you, but there were three men in particular who thrilled me intellectually. One was an anthropology professor, another, a sociologist (I become one of his groupies), and a third, a philosophy professor from whom was able to take a seminar with just four students beside myself. All of these men stimulated me to try to emulate them by becoming a professor myself.
I was twenty-two when I left Berkeley to attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota. That year -- it was 1958 -- I had graduated from Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree figuratively in my hand, and I was keen to go.
I had never been to the Midwest. I had scarcely ever been anywhere. Aside from spending two summers in Brooklyn before the age of 10, I had spent virtually my entire life in California. So the rest of the country was truly a terra incognita for me. I had hardly even ever encountered snow.
So Minneapolis was a shock. Graduate school was hard enough at first. Although I had received a $10,000 scholarship and had been accepted into a very prestigious social psychology program, my graduate school confreres all seemed brilliant and far more sophisticated than I was. Compared to them, I felt myself to be a hick and completely outclassed. This did not do wonders for my self-esteem. I would go home to my little rooming house and plunge both into despair and Tolstoy's War and Peace. I did not think I would survive the first quarter and wondered what would become of me.
But I also soon felt that I could not and would not survive the weather either. I did not have a car and had to walk about a mile to the building on campus where the Department of Social Relations was located, which is where I shared a large room with my fellow graduate students (and they were all fellows, too).
My route took me to the Mississippi River, which I had to cross (albeit with the help of a bridge) every morning, and once the early winter had set in, my jaw would be nearly frozen by the time I had reached the other side. And I am not exaggerating. I had never experienced such penetrating, bone-chilling cold. Even if I could manage to survive the rigors of graduate school, I was becoming convinced I would never be able to survive the rigors of a brutal Minnesota winter.
To backtrack a bit, it was a young visiting professor of social psychology at Cal named Harold H. Kelley who had induced me to apply to the University of Minnesota where he had been on the faculty. I had worked for Kelley as his research assistant during my last semester in Berkeley, and he had taken a shine to me. That was mutual, and Kelley would eventually become an important mentor to me, as you will see.As it turned out, when I had to confess to Kelley that I was having a hard time at many levels coping with the demands and trying exigencies of life as a graduate student in Minnesota, he suggested I would surely do much better to study directly under him and another distinguished social psychologist, Stanley Schachter, and he proved to be so right. Kelley saved my ass, and I will never forget his solicitude for me. In the years since, I have often wondered what would have become of me had it not been for Kelley's wise and decisive intervention during that critical period of my life when I had been suffering through a painful existential and professional crisis.
The best thing was, I could still retain my place at the Lab for Social Relations and continue to hang with and get to know my fellow grad students there. Soon enough, I was a regular part of our fun and games, too, which consisted at that time of intense cribbage matches and bridge games during lunch. I could still be "one of the boys." Stanley Schachter was also a habitué at the lab (his preferred game was “Go”) and that’s when I got to know him. Ultimately, he would prove to be a mentor of a different kind for me than Kelley, and one whose teaching style and research influenced my early career the most. I eventually took a year-long seminar with him, and loved it. It was really through his tutelage and example, and Kelley’s, that I was able to become in time an experimental social psychologist like these two men I so admired.I was happier by the time the snow started to melt in Minneapolis, although spring, which I was later to learn, lasted about ten minutes before the oppressive heat and humidity, prefiguring the proverbial "long, hot summer," took over. Nevertheless, before my first year there was over, it was already a new season in my life. I now had a girlfriend named Elizabeth, who was also a graduate student (her field was child development). She was certainly a major reason for my newfound cheerfulness, but not the only one. She also had a car. And, reader, mark this – that was enough to make me marry her.
Not all the professors I studied with while in graduate school were so inspiring as Kelley and Schachter, of course, and one of them was in a sense the opposite – a kind of "negative role model." One of these men – I won’t mention his name – taught a lecture course in social psychology. But taught it so poorly, in my opinion, that I knew I already could have taught it better. That experience was important to my development, too, because it showed me that I really could become a professor one day in my own right.
Kelley soon gave me the chance to prove it. He had to go out of town and asked me to take over his class in his absence. So he gave me my first chance to stand behind the lectern so that I could "profess." I was now in my element.
Toward the end of my third year there, Kelley had a surprise for me and not altogether a pleasant one. He had been offered a full professorship at UCLA and would be leaving soon to take that position. He gave me a choice: I could either remain there and choose another major professor with whom to do my doctoral dissertation or I could go with him to UCLA.
Personally, our year out there had more than its share of drama and trauma, but I will elide all that here and just focus on the academic side of my life at UCLA. I had to take some graduate courses there to finish up my coursework for my degree, but I mostly worked with Kelley on my doctoral dissertation. He was a mensch in all ways and was extremely helpful to me in getting it done. I also had a chance to spend lots of social time with him and his wife, Dorothy, at their home in Malibu. Kelley had been with me from the outset of my graduate school life and he saw me through to the end. I could never express enough gratitude to him for everything he did for me during the four years he was my major advisor.
Elizabeth and I had both accepted jobs in Connecticut. I would finally become the professor I had dreamed of being for so long, having been hired by the University of Connecticut where I would teach for the next thirty-four years. Not only that, but when Elizabeth and I were ready to leave for Connecticut, she was pregnant with our first child. A new life for both of us and our daughter-to-be was about to begin.
There is a brief coda with Harold Kelley. Years later, quite by chance, I ran into him in at LAX – the airport in LA. By then, I was already fairly well known for my work on near-death experiences. Kelley, who didn’t have any particular interest in NDEs, had heard of my work and was obviously proud of me. His esteem for me meant a lot to me. I had a chance tell him then how much he had meant to me.
I think we were both surprised that only one of those outstanding graduate students in the lab when I was there who always outshone me with their brilliance ever achieved any prominence in their field. Except for me. Go figure.
However, even after becoming a young professor, I still felt I was a student, still trying to learn from my betters. After about a half dozen years of teaching social psychology at UCONN, I became disillusioned with the field and felt drawn to the then nascent area of transpersonal psychology. In 1974, I participated in a month-long program in transpersonal psychology in Berkeley where I was to meet and be befriended by a number of the then luminaries in that field. Among then was Charles Tart, who had already become famous for his book on altered states of consciousness. Charley, too, became both a friend and an important mentor for me.
Not long ago, I was informed by a close friend of Charley’s that he had become very ill and did not expect to live much longer We were encouraged to write to Charley before it was too late. This is the letter I sent to him:
Dear Charley,It’s Ken Ring writing. I just learned that you are in a bad way with your health, though I was not given any specifics. In any case, I was very sorry to hear that you are not doing well now. I don’t know how seriously ill you are; I just hope you are not in too much pain.
Just in case you will not be around too much longer, I wanted to be sure to express my deep admiration, respect and love for you. Especially during the early years of my work on NDEs, you were a very important figure for me.
As I recall, I actually met you for the first time exactly fifty years ago this month! It was at a month-long consciousness program in Berkeley, co-sponsored by Esalen Institute and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. You were one of my intellectual heroes then. Of course, I had read your book on ACS, and in the years following, I read a number of your books and articles. And I’ll always be grateful to you for writing the foreword to my book, Mindsight.
I also heard you speak at a number of conferences in those days. I remember one thing you said in one of those talks that I have never forgotten. I’m not sure I remember the exact quote, but it was something like this: "I don’t know of anything that’s all good, including death."
Well, Charley. if death is in your short-term future, I hope in your case it is nothing but good, good beyond even your ability to imagine.
You were (and still are) a great mentor for me, and I will always cherish our friendship. I send you every good wish for the rest of your journey.
Love,
Ken
*********************
Well, it seems I have come full circle as I, too, near the end of the line. I had wanted to honor those who had nurtured and helped me to realize my dreams before I pass from the scene, even though those who taught and mentored me are no longer here to receive my thanks. But before I depart for whatever lies ahead for me, I also wanted to thank my ex-students whose kind words have now nurtured me.
In a few months, if I should survive that long, I will be eighty-nine, an age far greater than I ever expected or wanted to reach. I may very well soon follow Charley Tart to land, I hope, somewhere over the rainbow. Just the other day, I learned that another old friend and colleague of mine at UCONN had expired at 91. Most of my friends have now died or are otherwise moribund whereas I am just marking time. But I’m still grateful to be here while looking forward to my next adventure, which will probably reveal to me that my dream life was just a dream after all. For now, I can only wonder what I will experience when I wake up from the dream of my life.