If Julian of Norwich Were Your Professor

by Laura Moncion · August 5, 2015

dame_julianPreviously in this series: If Shakespeare’s Richard III Were Your Coworker

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you would ask her what would be on the final, and she would reply, “All manner of things shall be on the exam.”

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you could drop by with a question anytime, and she would be in her office. There would be rumours that she actually lived in her office. Even on the rare occasions that her door was closed, you would occasionally still hear the whistle of the teakettle.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would sometimes talk about her cat in class. She would compare Mr. Moggy’s determined effort to hunt the mice in the walls to humankind’s search for meaning in a crumbling and confusing world.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would be physically clumsy but mentally agile, constantly tripping over objects whilst offering incisive commentary on Augustine’s psychological analogy of the Trinity.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would always have a mug of tea nearby. When the two of you had meetings, she would offer you a cup of tea. It would always be builder’s tea, and you would always accept. Your papers would be returned to you with tea-rings on them, and sometimes a scribbled note of apology beside the stains.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would have the most enviable collection of cardigans.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would be older than the other assistant professors, and there would be rumours about her life before academia. Some would say that she came from a minor aristocratic family but no longer spoke to them; some would say that she had had several previous careers. No one would ever be impertinent enough to ask her, and no amount of Google searching would ever reveal the truth.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would occasionally appear on BBC history programmes. But she would never mention it unless asked, in which case she would fondly reminisce about all the laughs she had working with dear Sue Perkins.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would calmly and efficiently dispatch any offensive comments made by the bro in the back row. He would feel instant contrition, and start reading progressive feminist sites as soon as he got home. By the following semester, he would bring brownies to Gay-Straight Alliance meetings at which he would never, ever speak, only listen.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would always reply to your emails within the hour, and this would add fuel to your suspicions about her living in her office.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would never, ever drink with undergraduates.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would sometimes hold seminars outside. Your tight-knit class of six would sit in the dappled light under the hazelnut tree talking about Kristeva, and you’d be so caught up in the discussion you wouldn’t even notice that class ran over by twenty minutes.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would be good friends with Judith Butler. Sometimes you would hear their uproarious laughter coming from Julian’s office. You’d peek in and find both of them in front of the computer, watching cat videos together.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would never turn your scholarship forms in late.

If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would be deeply confused by the various types of social media used by her students. She would refer to “the Facebook,” “YourTube,” and “Twittering” and mix them all up. She would, however, know all about the Cloud.

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Laura Moncion

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55 Comments

  2. betsaroo +93

    If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you would ask her what would be on the final, and she would reply, “All manner of things shall be on the exam.”

    Pretty much my actual answer to students.

    1. leslieellenjones +16

      Pretty much the entire basis of the Honors track at Swarthmore–they bring in outside scholars to set the exams, so the professor actually has no way of knowing “will this be on the test?”

  3. Räven +46

    If Julian of Norwich were my professor, she would be touched by my determination to argue for St. Ambrose over St. Augustine at every point, and eventually she would be my girlfriend. We would adopt another cat together.

  5. mediaevumed +52

    This is the ultimate gestalt of medievalisms and grad school anxiety all rolled into one! Now do Margery Kempe! So much crying!

  6. rapunzel +27

    “If Julian of Norwich were your professor, you would ask her what would be on the final, and she would reply, “All manner of things shall be on the exam.”

    I feel inordinately proud that I get this reference.

    1. Dallan Invictus +15

      I feel inordinately ashamed that I only get this reference because I play far too much Fallen London.

      1. wallofillusion +34

        Taking the average of the two of you, I feel inordinately proud that I get this reference because of Fallen London.

  8. sigaloenta +29

    Based on this, I’m pretty sure I *had* Julian of Norwich as a professor in undergrad (she was even a medievalist!). would it be weird for me to send this to her out of the blue 5 years after I graduated? (Yes, because I still cherish hopes of one day getting a job at my old college (not in the medieval department). But it does remind me that I need to finish that email to her…)

    1. ReverAnn +21

      Yes, you should always remember to send sweet and funny things to your teachers. They live for it! –Old Teacher

      1. Gail Palmer +11

        I sent a program of a production of Spoon River Anthology at Chautauqua Institution to my eleventh-grade English teacher, who was single, and pretty much a hermit. She had come alive teaching it. she was touched beyond what I could have imagined, and i was humbled.

    2. Unreadaethel +15

      I posted this to FB and tagged my undergrad advisor (who’s a medievalist with an impressive collection of cardigans, who always returns emails promptly…and trips over things frequently…and has a cozy office filled with camping equipment…oh my god).

  9. Kathleen Brennan +18

    Omg, Julian watching cat videos with Judith Butler in her office…
    Now I’m doubly glad I took “Julian” as my confirmation name.

  10. 30Litresof +31

    Julian of Norwich (whom I LOVE and took my whole module on medieval literature during my degree down a completely unexpected and weird and beautiful path) sounds a lot like a combination of two of my supervisors. These would be my dissertation supervisor, who was MISS and not Dr X because she’d given up her PhD in the 70s to be the editor of the Gay Times, and my Renaissance lit supervisor who is literally the strangest person I’ve ever met and actually did live in his office during his divorce. Wouldn’t have thought to combine those two, let alone that the result would be Julian of Norwich, but you learn something new every day.

  11. menysnoweballes +63

    I love this! And as a lecturer in medieval history, I couldn’t help immediately thinking of switching it around. “If Margery Kempe were your student”:
    – This poor creature would sob loudly through the pop quiz you set because you need an hour to catch up on marking essays
    – This poor creature would submit tear-stained essays that nonetheless engaged energetically with the primary texts
    – This poor creature would be a mother, worker and mature student and would still turn up to class earlier and stay later than her fellow students
    – This poor creature would have a Dead Literary/Historical Boyfriend that she would bring up in every.single.class, regardless of relevance

  12. EnchiladaTaco +8

    I’m having a bad day (week. month. whatever.) and this is just so beautiful and wonderful.

  13. ladonnapietra +29

    If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would always tell you to be very nice to the poor department admins who were just trying to process your research assistant contract on time in the face of interdepartmental stupidity. She would also never, ever try to buy something unallowable on a federal award. She would collaborate with the Biology department on proposals regarding the eradication of yersinia pestis and serenely smile whenever anyone asked what a medievalist could possibly contribute to microbe research. She would win those proposals, too.

  15. dakimel +16

    I kept scrolling down a tiny bit at a time, afraid that I was going to hit the tags (never has beauty been more apt). I want to sink deeply into the cozy yet vibrant yet austere mattress of a life where Julian of Norwich is my Professor.

  16. Period_eye +33

    I have a new manifesto for life. To be a professor as if I were Julian of Norwich. I have the tea drinking and the cardigan wearing down.

    2. dakimel +5

      I’m all set on tea drinking, but my damn life choice to live in a city where it’s over 80* for 80% of the year has been disastrous WRT my cardigan game. /sadface

    3. bethanykj +4

      I’ve got those parts too, also the cat stories, but I’m wary of the living-in-my-office part.

  17. queenofbithynia +22

    I of course like this a great deal but this

    the most enviable collection of cardigans.

    is such an impossible concept that there is probably a very particular term in medieval philosophy for the precise logical fallacy it embodies. let’s just say that an enviable cardigan, like god creating a rock so heavy he cannot lift it, is an essentially meaningless concept not worth the brain spasms it induces in those encountering it for the first time.

    (Could God create a cardigan so uncardiganlike that he himself would envy the creature graced to wear it, or would it necessarily first lose all the incidents and accidents of cardigan nature in the process? there’s one to think on.)

    1. anotherkate_sf +23

      I do not share your opinion re: cardigans, but I do respect the manner in which you express it.

  18. sorrycassandra +23

    This is everything that was beautiful and real and worthwhile about academia for me. Thank you.

    Signed,
    the ex-classicist who clumsily painted her own icon of Julian to hang on the wall

  20. alula_auburn +10

    This was so beautiful I wanted to cry and then I got to Judith Butler and the cat videos and laughed instead.

  21. achemicaldefect +10

    This is perfect, and I think you’ve just made Julian of Norwich the patron saint of professors. I hope I can be more like this someday!

  22. leslieellenjones +22

    I think I have encountered pretty much every element of this at some time or another in my erratic course through academia, though never all in one professor. Sadly, the one who fell over things was me–flat on my face in the middle of a lecture on elements of pre-Christian religion preserved within hagiography in a class on Celtic paganism in front of a room full of Harvard Divinity students. I was marching across to write “hagiography” on the blackboard and WHAM, tripped over my briefcase. I cannot help but think there was some particularly trickstery Celtic deity behind it all.

  23. rebeccacityofladies +15

    “If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would sometimes talk about her cat in class. She would compare Mr. Moggy’s determined effort to hunt the mice in the walls to humankind’s search for meaning in a crumbling and confusing world.”

    This might be Christopher Smart, though.

  24. kathysmith +26

    Can we all agree that although Julian would be your favorite professor Margery Kempe would be by far the most entertaining. I mean it would be pretty impressive if she made it through a lecture without a “horrible” vision of “genitals and other such abominations”. Kempe is like that professor who is so fantastically bizarre that you just can’t see them functioning anywhere outside of the faculty and if you did you would see her having a huge altercation/spiritual revelation with supermarket staff about whether turnips have souls or something. Also any woman awesome enough to make her husband make a vow of celibacy is clearly trolling the world.

    1. innocent_smith +23

      If Julian of Norwich were your professor, Margery Kempe would be a protegeé of hers, about whose qualifications half the faculty would be extremely dubious. Adding to accusations that she isn’t a serious academic would be her status as a popular writer. Given that (a) her books make her in-demand as a speaker/guest of honor at conferences worldwide, and (b) her classes are also wildly well-attended, if notoriously odd, there would be a definite odor of sour grapes about some of these complaints.

  27. kayloulee +8

    “If Julian of Norwich were your professor, she would sometimes talk about her cat in class. She would compare Mr. Moggy’s determined effort to hunt the mice in the walls to humankind’s search for meaning in a crumbling and confusing world.”

    She would have a companion in this in the monk who wrote Pangur Ban!

    Oftentimes a mouse will stray
    In the hero Pangur’s way;
    Oftentimes my keen thought set
    Takes a meaning in its net.

    ‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
    Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
    ‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
    All my little wisdom try.

  28. Jeanne

    If Julian were my professor i would be drinking hazelnut coffee along with tea. (In joke about hazelnuts, Julian would laugh for sure).

  30. LitLass +1

    Uh… I think Julian of Norwich might be my professor. Yes, she’s a medievalist. However, she is competent with facebook.

  31. mendoza2355 +1

    Julian of Norwich isn’t a sweet old lady, she’s passionate and nuts and she has a kinky relationship with God!
    Well she is in Revelations of Divine Love. Are her other texts cozier?