Amanda Platz, Marshall Tankersley

There aren’t many people you can tell are English-loving individuals, but Dr. Virginia “Britt” Terry is one such person. With her willowy figure and piercing eyes, you immediately realize that this is a person who thinks, and thinks deeply, about everything under the sun. She has a variety of interests, from Frankenstein, to Drake, to passionately defending the importance of literature, even to the beauty of children’s literature. She is the embodiment of the Shakespearean line “though she be but little, she is fierce.”

When she walks into a class, Dr. Terry immediately demonstrates a quiet enthusiasm for what she’s teaching: just looking at her, you can see her passion for what she does, and that she wants her students to have it too. She is the type of professor whose doors are always open, and office hours always available for any questions you might have, even if they’re unrelated to coursework. Dr. Terry’s love and zest for life bubbles over in everything she does: if you run into her on campus, you’re just as likely to find her exuding joy about whatever cup of coffee she’s carrying as she does about her favorite books.

6:14 AM is a very specific time to wake up, but that’s when Dr. Terry finds herself awake. By 6:30 she is having breakfast and doing devotions. And then, the fun begins. She wakes up her three year old daughter, Catherine, and begins her daughters flexible routine. Breakfast, clothes, car. In that order… hopefully. After all, Catherine is only three. Then either she or Dr. Sircy (the husband) loads the child into their car and takes her to school. Whichever takes her to school has an extra 40 minutes of driving tacked onto their routine. She gets to campus around 8 to 8:30, ready to tackle her own schedule.

8:00 to 8:30AM, on Southern Wesleyan University’s campus. This is where work begins. She spends a part of her time preparing for class, a task that ranges from reading notes and PowerPoints to creating handouts and sketching out a timeline for class. The rest of her time is spent attending chapel,  teaching, meeting with her colleagues, getting coffee, and grading. She has been spotted by her students on multiple occasions grabbing a coffee from Blue Hill, and on more than one occasion has been stopped by some of the same students for lengthy discussions about graduate programs, creative writing groups, or what-have-you. Dr. Terry’s willingness to take time for her students is an attribute that has quickly endeared her to her students, just as much as her passion for her work.

Teaching a subject like English is both hard and rewarding in turns. Dr. Terry finds it difficult to disconnect her professional, analytical ways of thinking from her personal life, to both good and ill effect. One one hand, the world is a more beautiful place as everything from music to literature is something to be analyzed and understood better – but on the other hand, everything is something to be analyzed. There is no potential for a break, a ceasing of thought or detachment from the intellectual world. On the whole, though, the benefits outweigh the cost. Dr. Terry uses this to her and her students’ advantage, allowing her to analyze things as diverse as Drake, The Great Gatsby, R.E.M, and Mary Shelley’s personal life and connect them to her students. This state of mind makes her subjects all the more real to her class, bridging the gap between their abstract, intellectual nature and the day-to-day business of living that everyone is most familiar with. Most of all, Dr. Terry is determined not to let herself get to the point where she’s consumed with trying to constantly compete and improve, but rather realize that everything is fun and enjoyable. What better way of living is there?

She describes being a professor as focused on the interior instead of the exterior life. It’s a lot of thinking–and with that amount of thinking, one could imagine her having a pretentious vocabulary, however, this is the woman who described Jane Eyre as “a boss.” I think it’s safe to say that this woman has not a pretentious bone in her body. A lot of her internal thought processes are focused on how people think about writing, or about whatever book she happens to be reading. At Southern Wesleyan University, she has found herself reading works she is unfamiliar with, a task she has found thoroughly enjoyable. The unfamiliar texts do to her what they do to all english majors: they show her new ways of thinking and expand the mind to new realms and enlighten her to the life of others.

One would assume that the life of a professor is easily understood; after all, it just involves communicating information to people, doesn’t it? If one believes that, one would be wrong. Education involves much more than simply spouting off words, it requires the delicate work of understanding people. Teaching students at a General Education level is far different than teaching upperclassmen, as Dr. Terry has discovered. Her experience lies mostly with new students taking those General Education classes, but her mentality is not one that leads her to ‘dumb down’ her subject matter or, conversely, to spout off high academic jargon that those students would not understand. Dr. Terry’s desire is always for what is best for her students, so she seeks to balance pushing them outside of their comfort zones into new, spectacular lands with not overwhelming them with the power of literature. She knows how to work her audience, and deftly meaneuvers those in her care to the place where they ‘get’ what she’s trying to help them understand.

For Dr. Terry in upper-level classes, her focus becomes answering the more ridiculous questions posed by her upper-level students, such as “what are your opinions on Percy Shelley?” or “wait, who was the guy who claimed to have accidentally killed his wife via neck massage?” (actual questions recorded from Literary Criticism, Spring Semester 2018). Outside of class, during her office hours, or if you catch her in random places on campus, such as the library or Blue Hill Coffee & Tea Co. (two places you would most expect to find an English Professor), she is always ready to answer any question posed to her by a student, or to have a friendly, enthusiastic conversation about literature or anything she finds interesting. She doesn’t do this half-heartedly, but wholly throws herself into any discussion she finds herself in. Students have asked her advice regarding their possible career paths, and then turned around and started a discussion about a new book they were reading. In all of this, Dr. Terry does not show any level of disinterest, but instead, with her beloved calm enthusiasm, partakes in the conversation, gives honest and wholesome advice, and sprinkles her wisdom into the lives of her students. Most importantly, Dr. Terry shows her students the importance of literature in everyday life, in such a way that its value cannot be missed.

The love of literature is a defining mark of Dr. Terry’s life (if the reader hasn’t already noticed). When asked about her favorite book, she first complained about the unfairness of the question (given that it’s so hard to choose a favorite out of all that she loves), and then proceeded to say that currently, her favorite book is Jane Eyre, for the reason that it is delightful and re-readable, and, as quoted from a friend of a friend of hers, the most Christian book ever written. Important books to read in order to understand her include Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, To Kill a Mockingbird, On the Origin of Species, and Mere Christianity. This segues into why she finds literature important. Dr. Terry sees literature as a fundamental aspect of how one should view the world; literature is a sharing of ideas, of souls, and is one of the best ways to get to know another person and the human condition. Reading the stories of Dickens or Hugo, one can understand the plight of the oppressed that one has never personally experienced. Reading All Quiet on the Western Front gives one an impression of what life as a soldier is like when one has never stared Death’s eyes down on a daily basis. Analyzing and understanding the themes of literature gives one empathy for one’s fellow man.

Dr. Terry’s passion for learning and heart for her students has quickly become part of the bedrock of Southern Wesleyan. Inveigling herself into the lives of the students, she has set out on a mission to make better people, and has succeeded. In describing the importance of literature, Dr. Terry unwittingly described her all-encompassing view of life when she said, “Learning about writing and literature helps us see our Creator and helps us see our fellow humans as equals,as people with similar desires and ideas. And that’s just amazing that we get to study these things.”