My Train Ride

I cried a little on the train ride to my internship today. You may think - Erachet? The same one who just posted about smiling in memory of Dr. Schwebel?

I am going through weird emotions - sometimes I want to try to be positive about this whole thing, sometimes I feel complete and utter devastation. This morning, I felt the latter.

Yesterday, I asked the editor of the paper I intern for for a copy of the recommendation letter Dr. Schwebel wrote for me at the beginning of June. I was scared to read the letter at first, not sure what I would see. What I did see actually made me smile a bit. Dr. Schwebel described me in similar ways that I've been describing her now. I keep talking about how Dr. Schwebel genuinely wanted to teach. I could tell she loved having students. And she wrote about me that I genuinely wanted to learn Latin. I wasn't doing it because I thought I had to or because my parents were making me, I was doing it because I thought it was cool. It just made me smile to find out that we were writing similar things about each other without even knowing it.

But today, I feel so angry about what happened to Dr. Schwebel. In some irrational way, I feel like I should have warned her. When she said she was going to be out of contact until the end of July, I should have told her not to go. Obviously, there's no way I could have known, but I wish I had. I wish I could have prevented it. I don't know why I'm feeling this way. It isn't like this is realistic at all. There was nothing I could have done, no way I could have known.

Like Shira just wrote, I feel orphaned by this loss. Dr. Schwebel was the mentor I had never had before. I always wanted to be one of those students who got close to their teachers, but I never was before Dr. Schwebel came to Stern. I was always too shy. Dr. Schwebel allowed me to open up. She was slowly breaking through a barrier I always had around teachers and I truly felt like she was my mentor. I knew she was someone I was going to keep in touch with forever. I really did love her. I looked up to her, I saw possibilities in myself that I had never seen before. She changed me for the better, that's for sure.

But how can God have taken her so early? How can it really have been her time? I wasn't finished learning from her! I still need her! I feel like my safety net at Stern has been stolen from me and now I must get my bearings again, find myself within the school. I feel like a part of me, a part of my world, was taken with Dr. Schwebel.

I am truly crushed.