M and N: Marianna Hofer and Nelle Harper Lee

M is for Marianna Hofer. Marianna was my academic adviser during my undergraduate time at The University of Findlay. She was also my professor for many classes and my adviser for the Envoy Literary Magazine when I was on the staff (as technical editor and head managing editor). I met Marianna in my first semester at UF. I had just transferred from The University of Toledo, and I came in as a physician assistant major. I wanted to take an English class because I had been miserable taking all chemistry and biology classes in the past semester, so I signed up for Professor Hofer's English 104 class since the English 106 classes were all booked up. I had tested into English 106, but I really wanted to do some writing; therefore, I took this class and my history as an English major at UF started.

Marianna was unlike any other teacher that I had had before. Her dry sense of humor, sarcasm, and knowledge of obscure literary information made each class with her a treat. She was talking to me one day, and I was discussing with her that I was thinking about switching my major to English and education, and she said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Well, duh, you're an English major! Hey, do you need an adviser?" And therein started her influence on me as a writer and a reader.

I took poetry class with her later on in my college career, and I randomly stopped into her office frequently just to chat about life. She was the first college professor that I had that was personable and easy to hold a conversation with. She would always share something odd about whatever she was reading at the moment, and even later on in my undergraduate career we shared teaching stories and ideas of how to approach different pieces of literature. We are also both avid book collectors who have way too many volumes in our collections. I'm in denial, but she realizes that buying books is a "sickness" and at least once a year she goes through her collection and gets rid of the books she doesn't need anymore. At that point, she brings them to her office and sends out a mass email that there are free books for the taking, and that is when I show up. I have added so many books to my collection over the years thanks to her.

Marianna has been more than just an adviser and professor to me during my time at UF. She has been a great friend. I've taken both writing and reading courses with her, added her book of poetry "A Memento Sent by the World" to my list of favorite books (You must read it!), edited a literary magazine with her, and discussed my future with her as she guided me in the right direction numerous times. She taught me that English professors don't have to be pretentious, but that they can be very down-to-earth and, at the same time, out of this world (and believe me, that is a compliment of the highest extent).

At my college graduation

N is for Nelle Harper Lee. I included her on this list because I needed to find a way to incorporate To Kill a Mockingbird, and all of the other appropriate letters were used up. I first read To Kill a Mockingbird during my freshman year of high school in Mrs. Malchow's class.  It was a book that immediately changed my perspective on life. I had never read a book that held so much power for social justice and change. In influenced me to read more, to write more, to make a difference in the world.

It is a shame that Harper never wrote another novel after Mockingbird, but it is also a blessing because she got her masterpiece with the first try. She was such an interesting individual having actually lived through a lot of the events in her novel. I was also pleased to find out that she was best childhood friends with my favorite author, Truman Capote. It is neat to see how each writer respectively put one another in their first books. I would like to make my way down to Monroeville, Alabama in the future to check out the museum dedicated to their work while also taking a climb on Boo Radley's apple tree.

Harper Lee with Truman Capote around 1966