Student Favorite: Dr. Lamont
Dr. Lamont is known for her challenging classes and seemingly endless love of literature and the English language. Co-editor Zaid Badiger learns more about Dr. Lamont in the interview below.
Pixel Journal: How did you decide to become a teacher?
Dr. Lamont: There were two things that influenced me. I never considered teaching at all until I had to become a swim teacher in order to get to the next pay grade as a lifeguard in Florida (my summer job during college). I didn’t think I would enjoy teaching swim lessons at all, because I hadn’t been the type of person who liked babysitting or looking after young kids. But I found it extremely satisfying to see a kid who couldn’t really swim before lessons started be able to swim across the whole pool at the end of a set of lessons. Once I decided to go to grad school in English, I knew that part of my job would be teaching. One of the requirements in my grad program at UCLA was to begin teaching undergraduates during my second year. To my surprise, I found that what I liked about teaching swimming was what I liked about teaching literature—seeing students who couldn’t do something very well before (closely analyze texts and write strong argumentative essays about those texts) learn how to do that and really take off. I love seeing my students gain skill and confidence in tackling more and more challenging texts and assignments increasingly on their own.
PJ: Why did you decide to teach English? What interests you most about the subject?
DL: I have always loved to read. My mother used to joke, “Earth to Meg, come in Meg,” when I was a kid and she was trying to get my attention when I was reading, because I wouldn’t notice her or anything around me. I can still get lost for hours in a book and lose track of time and where I am in space (doing so nowadays is one of my great indulgences). So I knew I wanted to do something with literature. When I got to college, I took classes across a wide swath of subjects (admittedly mostly humanities) but the classes I loved best were always English classes. I love that there are multiple right answers in analyzing literature, and that ambiguity or uncertainty is not an ending point but a starting point for thinking about a text. I also simply think many works of literature are beautiful in and of themselves—in a way that gives them inherent meaning outside of any analysis. In terms of teaching more specifically, after college I went into publishing and, while the work was interesting, I didn’t love it the way I had loved studying literature in college. So going to grad school, and knowing I would teach as well as study literature for the rest of my life, was a way to keep doing the thing I loved best—reading, and talking with others about the texts that I had read—for the rest of my life.
PJ: If you had to choose, what would you choose as your favorite book and why?
DL: I am torn between three, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. But Wuthering Heights is probably my very favorite because I read it first. I love because one of the main characters, Catherine, is so entirely mad and marvelous all at once, and the novel has one of my favorite passages in all of literature: “I’ve dreamt dreams in my life that have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind” (from memory, so may be slightly off). Then Catherine goes on to tell of a dream in which she died and went to heaven and the angels cast her out because she missed earth so much, and she woke up on the heath by Wuthering Heights sobbing for joy. When I first read that passage I was in seventh grade and that kind of passionate attachment to this earth, this world, blew my mind. I also felt like the quotation perfectly encapsulated how certain books (more than dreams) had affected me, altered the color of my mind.
PJ: If you could meet any author, dead or alive, who would you meet and why?
DL: Geoffrey Chaucer. I would want to meet him because he’s such a conundrum. Sometimes he seems so humane, so modern, so sympathetic to and understanding of human foibles, without losing faith in the value of humankind. And other times he seems so totally dismissive of the value of earthly life (which is perfectly in keeping with religious beliefs in his time period), and it is most likely of all that he was (again, perfectly in keeping with his time) a terrible anti-Semite. I doubt getting to meet him would actually answer the questions of interpretation raised by these oppositions, any more than it would with an author now alive. But I would love to ask him about the Wife of Bath, and Criseyde, and Cecily Champagne (who filed a rape charge against him) and—perhaps most of all—whether he meant his retraction to the Canterbury Tales.
PJ: What does your life look like outside of school?
DL: Right now I have a six-year-old daughter, so a lot of my life outside of school is related to her—picking her up from school, taking care of her, etc. My husband and I also have a good group of friends from college in the area, and so we see them most weekends—usually something pretty low key, like dinner over at someone’s house or an outing to the city somewhere. My husband and I are sort of foodies (not all in), so we like to explore different restaurants, especially in San Francisco since we live only about 15 minutes away. I love the ocean, so I try to stop by for at least a few minutes every day where I can hear the waves and smell the salt. On weekends, I try to get in at least a walk or mini-hike, ideally right by the water. And of course I read. One habit I have during the school year, that I picked up in college during finals when I needed to relax, is to read young adult novels. I love that you can read them very fast, often in just a couple of hours, but they tend to be really good (often a high editorial standard).
PJ: Based on your experience as a teacher, what is one piece of advice you would give to OHS students?
DL: I know it sounds impossible, and I would be lying if I said I never cried over a grade as a student, but my advice would be to slow down and make sure you are enjoying your work—writing essays you actually care about, not what you think the teacher wants to hear, and making space for some of the things in your life that bring you unadulterated joy (for me, reading and the ocean).