Instructor Spotlight: Dr. Chudzinski

If someone had traveled back in time to tell a young Dr. Adrienne Chudzinski of her future position as a history teacher at OHS, she would have been surprised. In about 4th or 5th grade, Dr. Chudzinski’s dreams consisted of tap dancing in the Broadway spotlight at night, while practicing law in Manhattan during the day. Competing from elementary school to high school, Dr. Chudzinski was an avid dancer and hoped to one day pursue dance professionally. Dr. Chudzinski recalls, “I knew that [professional dancing] might not have the best job security… so I’d tell people ‘I’m going to be a lawyer in Manhattan as a backup, but then really I’ll be a Broadway star!’”

As she matured and her enthusiasms shifted, Dr. Chudzinski’s interests varied from psychiatry to history to psychology. Only once entering college did Dr. Chudzinski begin to fully pursue her passion for history. Though Dr. Chudzinski initially planned on majoring in political science along with history, she quickly realized that her poli-sci classes did not catch her interest nearly as much as her history classes did. As her father is an attorney, Dr. Chudzinski remembers asking him, “‘Does poli-sci ever get less boring?” He replied ‘Nope,’ so I decided I didn’t want to do that.” As Dr. Chudzinski was still sure that she wanted to pursue a graduate education, she adjusted her plan and committed to earning a PhD in history. In undergrad, Dr. Chudzinski majored in history while minoring in European area studies, earning a bachelor’s degree. In graduate school, Dr. Chudzinski majored in history and minored in sociology.

As Dr. Chudzinski is a people-person, she was always drawn to having a job with a social aspect. She explains, “Some […] options that would be available to a historian, such as doing research or working in an archive, are so solitary, and ultimately I need to interact with people”; thus, teaching seemed like a compelling choice. Once discovering OHS, Dr. Chudzinski found that she “was really, really interested, more interested than any other job I was applying to.” Throughout graduate school, Dr. Chudzinski enjoyed volunteering at an empowerment program for school-aged girls, Girls Inc.; thus, the opportunity to work with younger students sparked her interest. Dr. Chudzinski was teaching university students at the time, who would sometimes not attend or sleep through classes. Dr. Chudzinski found herself “ready for students that wanted to learn, who had a little more accountability for themselves, and weren’t in the class just because it was a requirement.” Furthermore, she saw classes being fully online as a new challenge to conquer. As Dr. Chudzinski had never taught online before, she found herself slightly worried, but ultimately told herself, “I’m young, I’ll figure it out, it can’t be that hard!” Dr. Chudzinski emphasised that the OHS staff made the switch to online simple.

Dr. Chudzinski has found that the best part of teaching at OHS is the diversity of the school, as within each of her classes she teaches students of all ages and from all over the world. She explains, “It’s really cool to think that I’m in their living room in whatever place they’re at and whatever timezone they’re in. That to me is the best part of it: being able to interact with people on a daily basis that are from all over the world, people who really want to be there and who care.” As most history classes at OHS are electives, Dr. Chudzinski loves that the students in her classes want to take the class and are engrossed in the topics. Because OHS students are so engaged, however, Dr. Chudzinski notes that “it makes me have to be on the top of my game, too.” She describes that students are always asking her questions or for more information, and she has to tell them, “I’m not an encyclopedia—I don’t have it all in my head! That’s an excellent question I don’t know the answer to right now, we can look it up!” Dr. Chudzinski notes that what she has learned the most during her time at OHS is “to not have an ego about my own knowledge. I have to admit a lot that I just don’t know that fact offhand. It’s challenging, but a good challenge to have!”

When asked what influential historical figure she would meet if given the chance, Dr. Chudzinski exclaimed, “That’s a tough one to ask a historian!” Dr. Chudzinski has had the honor of already having met some of the individuals who would be at the top of her list. For example, she had the good fortune to talk to John Lewis, a leader in the Civil Rights movement who passed away this summer. After pondering for a moment, Dr. Chudzinski decided that Ida B. Wells would be her choice. As Wells was a woman on “the ground-floor level of Civil Rights activism,” Dr. Chudzinski would love to be able to hear her unique viewpoint. “I would also want to talk to her because, while we usually have a tendency to just remember the important men in the Civil Rights movement era, she was a woman who was super important. I’d rather talk to a woman and get her perspective […] where she had to fight both sexism and racism,” Dr. Chudzinski shares.

Now that she resides in California, Dr. Chudzinski enjoys spending time in nature by exploring areas up and down the bay. One way Dr. Chudzsinki likes to spend time outside is distance running. “I am a big fan of going on a ten- or eleven-mile run. I’ll just say, ‘Bye, I’m going on a run, I’ll be back in 90 minutes!’” she laughs. Though she runs often, Dr. Chudzinski doesn’t participate in races; as she is naturally competitive, she likes to leave running as her time to destress. A few times, however, she has found herself accidentally joining a few marathons or half marathons when out on her regular runs. Though she wouldn’t want to compete, Dr. Chudzinski does enjoy the moral support that races provide, noting, “I won’t take their food but I’ll take their cheers!” Outside of running, Dr. Chudzinski loves to travel. As her family lives in Ohio, Dr. Chudzinski usually travels back and forth to visit, which has now been challenging due to COVID. In the summer of 2019, Dr. Chudzinski traveled to Spain and Greece, and illustrates that “traveling is my guilty pleasure; it’s one of my favorite things. It’s something I’d always rather spend money on!”

Dr. Chudzinski’s passion for history and politics extends past her academic life and to her favorite TV shows and movies as well. Her favorite TV show, The West Wing, is a political drama that came out in the late 1900s and the early 2000’s. Dr. Chudzinski enjoys how the show was written, as well as the compromise and civility that is shown between characters within the show. “I think that lately, with everything being so discordant, it feels like there’s so much more compromise on that show than we currently have; it’s kind of nice to know that that’s possible in an ideal world, that people can disagree but still sit in the same room together and try to find a solution,” she explains. For movie choices, Dr. Chudzinski appreciates Forrest Gump and, “being a historian, I guess that makes sense.” She likes how the movie “goes through the march of the 20th century as he’s inserted into all those events. I mean, it’s totally not from a serious, scholarly point of view, but I think it’s funny.”

When asked to give one piece of advice to OHS students, Dr. Chudzinski tells students to relax. She emphasizes that, though grades are important, “getting an A in every class right away isn’t always a good sign.” As OHS classes are so rigorous, struggling a bit with a class means that the students are being challenged. “I know nobody wants to hear that; I would not have wanted to hear that as a student either! But I look back at the classes I had to work my butt off for an A-, and those were the ones I remember that I learned the most in, [the classes] where I feel proud and like I actually accomplished something.” Dr. Chudzinski sympathizes with students, as she knows that high school can be high pressure, but she emphasizes, “You’re all already doing all the right things when it comes to staying on top of your school work and caring about it.” Her ultimate advice is to “relax…it might not be the plan that you laid out or that your parents had laid out for you, but everybody’s path will take a lot of unforeseen twists and turns, [and] that’s fine!”

This interview was conducted on September 22, 2020. Since then, Dr. Chudzinski has announced the exciting news of her pregnancy and her maternity leave in the winter and spring of 2021. Congratulations!