She taught the first class I took at Iowa State.
A graduate in a class of 18, I walked into her Journalism 101 class on Aug. 25, 2008, and was intimidated enough by the 400 plus students crowded into that Hoover Hall auditorium.
Then Barbara Mack walked in.
As if she flipped a switch, this larger-than-life personality silenced the room, and set out to teach us all about the foundations of journalism in cuneiform, Johannes Gutenburg’s invention of moveable type — by her count, the greatest invention of all time — and the absolute basics of the complex field that is journalism.
She joked with students, she was jovial and easy going while she taught and yet she was never shy about getting students’ attention with a shout. Or even just a stare. Barbara Mack commanded attention.
Her physical presence was intimidating enough, once you added in her personality — and what you’d heard from other students unfortunate enough to bear her wrath at one point or another — and it’s as if you were in the room with a god.
But then, if you were lucky, you got to know her.
I got to know her when I sheepishly walked to her podium after class one day in what must have been September.
“Professor Mack?” I said, barely audible, to the presence in front of me.
“Yes, dear?” she said, smiling, but not looking away from her work.
“I work at the Daily, and …”
“Oh you do!? Good for you!” she interjected. Loudly. As she always interjected.
“Yeah, and we’re having a guest in to our staff meeting Friday, Ken Fuson.”
“Oh, Ken! I love Ken. That will be wonderful.”
“That’s what I hear. Only thing is, our meeting is right at the same time class ends. Any chance I can skip out a few minutes early to head over?”
“How about this,” she said, turning her giant eyes to me. “Why don’t I drive you over after class is over. I need to see Ken, as it is.
I had no idea what to say. This giant, this worldly, accomplished professor was going to go out of her way to take me, a tiny, scared-to-death freshman, across the length of campus just so I could get to a meeting close to on time? Professors didn’t do that.
Not the professors I always heard about.
Friday came, and I can’t tell you a thing about that class period but my being nervous thinking about the 5-minute ride with her. Once class ended, though, and I climbed into her run-down Honda, she melted those fears. She talked to me. Not like I was a student, but like I was a person.
Almost as if I was a friend.
I learned more in that 101-level course than I dare say I learned in any other course I took in four years at Iowa State — the lone exception being the 400-level course I took with her three summers later.
I learned more about US history in that Journalism 101 course than I dare say I’ve learned in any US history course offered me.
That’s the thing about Barbara: you always learned more.
If you misspoke, she was quick to correct you. If you used the word “like” in any other form than to say you enjoy something or to compare one thing to another, she was quicker to smack you upside the head — only sometimes figuratively — and, somehow reassuringly, insult you for having such poor speech techniques. Her knowledge spanned so far beyond journalism or grammar — she’d travelled the world, she was a lawyer by trade and was by all accounts the most accomplished foodie on either side of the Mississippi — that conversations in her journalism classes were almost never about journalism.
I was lucky enough to have Barbara as my academic adviser, but for no more than a month when news came that she was retiring shortly after the 2009-10 school year.
I was heartbroken then, just at the thought of not having her advice to rely on for my three years.
My interactions with Barbara were limited from the end of that first semester to the summer of 2010. I met with her twice — maybe — to discuss my academic future. I passed her in the hallway or saw her in and around the Daily offices, never sure if she remembered who I was.
Then I took her Media Law class that summer, and I was sure she remembered who I was.
She knew me, because she picked on me. She called on me for answers, examples and anecdotes about the topic at hand in class that day. She talked with me before and after class — whichever I was actually there for. She made me feel so much different than professors in my other classes did. She made me feel special.
I went on from that class to work with her at the Daily — my year as Editor in Chief (2011-12) was her final year as a member of the Daily’s Publication Board. Any meeting she was in, it seemed, the crowd would always turn to her, at one point or another, and ask “Barbara, what do you think?” Her answers were always right.
The day of my graduation from this school — thanks in larger part to her than she would ever know — she sat and talked with me and my family for what seemed like hours. Not about my impending graduation or immersion into the real world, but life on the farm. And bacon. And whatever else was going on that impossibly sunny day in May.
My final day in Journalism 460, Mack’s Media Law class, was a day before the class’s final day.
I was heading off for a study abroad in Greece and Turkey over the course of the next four weeks, and I couldn’t be bothered with rushing home the next day to pack for my excursion. She prepared a separate final a day earlier than she needed to. It seems like such a small thing.
I stayed after class that day, a Thursday, and as she gave my exam to me, another one of her almost trademarked — I only know it’s not actually trademarked, because she taught me what a trademark is during that class — tangents, as far from that test as a conversation could’ve been.
“So, you’re going to Greece?” she asked, fully knowing the answer.
She went on to tell me all about her trips to Greece; about the amazing views from the cliffs and the seas; about the amazing food I absolutely must try while I was there. On and on, she went, about the beautiful sand, water and men, about the delicious olives, lemon and tzatziki sauces. On and on, she went, about everything but that test.
I remember now thinking I wished she’d just let me take my test.
She finished talking, and after only 10 minutes of my test time — a time I’d figured would be an hour and a half, if not more — she started packing up her things.
“Well, I’m going to leave you to finish that test,” she said. “I need to be getting home and not distracting you.”
“Oh,” I thought. “How oddly trusting of her to leave me here alone with my books and my test.”
It was a strange feeling, knowing that she knew me well enough to trust that I wouldn’t pull out my book — sitting not more than two feet from me inside my bag on the floor next to me — and look up every answer to every question she posited on that impossible exam.
It was a far stranger feeling knowing that I’d maxed out my educational time with her.
She taught me more about life — as cheesy and cliche as that could sound — in those two journalism courses I took with her than I think anyone else has in my 22 years. I’ve never felt so comfortable to make a mistake while still having the dread of letting her down inside my heart. I laughed when she was around, even while she was correcting me or telling me what an idiot I’d been.
She was like a second mother to me. And, much like my mother, she always expected great things from me and pushed me to be better than I’d ever been.
Before she left, she said there was a Greek dish I absolutely must try while I was there, and if I didn’t I’d be as good as dead to her.
“It’s this fried cheese dish,” she said, and I could almost see her mouth watering. “You drip a little lemon juice on that thing, it will melt as soon as it’s in your mouth.”
It was a week into my trip, in the town of Thessaloniki that I finally tried that cheese dish.
I looked away from our cafe table to a beautiful Greek beach on the Aegean Sea as I took bite after bite of that delightfully fried cheese.
It was then I knew that Barbara Mack was right about everything she’d told me about Greece.
It took her leaving for good for me to realize that she was right about everything.
