217) Francisco, and the motivation to keep reaching out to the world (NOTE: Please forgive me if I have misspelled your name!!) :)

I did remember you, Francisco.  I couldn’t have placed you in exactly the right class, as it has, after all, been a decade or so.  But as soon as you said the class you’d taken, I knew you.  

In that moment, I was completely shocked that you were speaking to me, both that you remembered me and that you had the courage to come up behind some woman standing in the relative darkness, in the cold wind, at a Filipino food festival, and ask her if she was your professor from so long ago.  

It was one of those funny synchronicity moments (or perhaps coincidences if one wants to be a skeptic), because my girlfriend and I, about 5 minutes earlier, for the very first time in our entire relationship, had been wondering if I might run into a former student that evening.  I’d said it was possible, but unlikely; after all, it had been almost a decade since I had taught a class.  And I’d laughed, “Besides, even if I did, I doubt they’d recognize me anymore.”

I used to get recognized near-daily on my travels through Toronto, from subway rides to stores to random encounters on the street.  It was fun, I admit, and I was always delighted when someone told me something they remembered from class, something that had touched them, a story that had become part of their repertoire of stories-they-picked-up-from-somewhere.  What a sincere honour it is, to have so many people’s relatively-undivided attention for hours at a time.  I did, always, to the best of my ability, teach from the heart, make my classes personal, tell stories from my life, challenge the existing power structures of “the system”, and go deep, as deep as I’m able, in the hopes that I might play some catalytic role in people’s own evolving depths.  

But yes, I hadn’t been recognized in a long time.  And not once since transitioning.  After all, “a few things” have changed for me, appearance-wise, in the past year and a half.  And so, I was pretty sure that anyone who had sat in Professor Dolderman’s classes so long ago, wouldn’t guess that some random woman with long blond-ish hair and (if I do say so myself) pretty slay eye make-up, was the same person.

But there you were.  

My feelings in that moment?  Total overwhelm.  Deer-in-headlights.  I felt a mixture of shock, shame, and delight.  

The shock is easy to understand, given everything I just described.

Shame?  Well, yes.  I left the UofT under not-so-great circumstances, and it has taken this past decade to come to terms with it.  Certain elements of “the administration” were absurdly (especially for a psychology department) unethical in this process, to a degree that I could not have expected, and still reel from when I think about it.  But I also internalized the experience as a personal failure — leftovers from a childhood in which everything negative was forced to be internalized.  The fact that a good 100 or so students were left in the lurch at the time, still haunts me. Likely always will.  After 15+ years of pouring my heart and soul into sharing the best of myself and my ideas with students, I felt like a piece of shit knowing that “I” had let them down.  (In truth, and with many years of therapy now, I can see that I was operating in an inhumane system that intentionally punished an employee for having a mental health crisis, and treated them in such a way as to exacerbate that crisis to the point of complete breakdown. But like I said, I did internalize this, and it still eats away at me.)

And…delight.  Oh my god, honestly I don’t have the verbal articulation skill to adequately express how delighted I was in that moment, looking you in the eyes, and stammering whatever I was able to conjure while mentally paralyzed.  

I hope I acknowledged your reaching-out, Francisco.  I really do.  I know I said something like “Wow, that was a long time ago”, and asked your name and shook your hand.  And other than that, it’s kind of a blur.  I know I forgot to ask you what you’re doing now.  I wish I had said more.  

But delight.  Oh my, yes.  My heart lifted, I admit, in knowing that someone who used to sit in my classes (and ask questions afterwards!) still remembered me and those experiences with enough fondness that they would come up to a possible-stranger at a food festival, and tentatively ask, “Are you Professor Dolderman?”  You said that you read my blog, and I was so stunned in that moment, I didn’t know what to say, and didn’t end up saying most of what I wanted to.  

But internally?  Joy.

My girlfriend could see, as you walked away afterwards, that I was on the verge of tears.  And she hugged me, for quite a while.  Which, I needed.  

Professors have the ability to change lives, as they share the results of many years of learning with their students.  I was told that I did so, so many times I am almost embarrassed to admit it.  It’s SUCH an honour.

But students have the ability to change professors’ lives too.  One transphobic student did so in a horribly negative way a few days after I came out publicly as a trans woman.  Their attempts to set the right-wing mob of trans-haters against me has potentially imperilled my life, and I spend every day now with vestiges of fear as to “what someone might do”.  What a horrible thing to do to somebody, simply because you are prejudiced.  I have a whole life behind me and hopefully ahead of me; I have children, people who love me, people who count on me.  I have dreams and goals and aspirations and so very many people whom I love. And this person threatened all of that, simply to be an asshole.  

I wish that person well, in a deep sense, not that they are merely “happy in life”, but that they get whatever healing they need to deal with their hate.  If you attack people for who they are, ESPECIALLY in moments where they have had the courage to share their vulnerability with the world, then you are a very, very sad person and frankly, need help, or you will continue to poison the world with your intolerance.  I hope that person gets help someday, and sooner rather than later.  

Other students have changed my life in extremely positive ways.  I count among my very best friends quite a number of former students, and over the years we have enjoyed hikes and walks and deep talks, laughter, tears, dancing, movies, chess games, lunches, zoom calls, letters, and have contributed to each other’s personal growth in ways I am endlessly thankful for.  

And Francisco?  You changed my life just a few days ago, simply by saying hi.  It was such a gesture of kindness.  I have to tell you, you reinvigorated me to keep reaching out to the world.  I’ve been wavering with this blog, wondering whether to keep writing or to just embrace my new life as a competitive chess player and let the rest go.  But I DO believe there is value to a lifetime of learning, and as Noam Chomsky so eloquently wrote over his career, it is the responsibility of intellectuals to share their learning with the world, to confront narratives of falsehood, to expose the abuses of power that they can see, and to spread what light they can.  (Indeed, it is the responsibility of everybody to do so.)

So I am going to keep writing.  Keep planting good seeds.  And…do what I can.  I have also been tossing around the idea of starting a YouTube channel for…oh, about 20 years now.  So I’m going to take this reinvigorated motivation, and act on it, launching this channel sometime in October.  I don’t know what will come of it, because of course, in a world steered so frequently by the “black swans” of nonlinearity, we never know what the outcomes of our actions are going to be.  But in general, I believe that if your actions are rooted in authenticity, compassion, and ethics, then you are doing the best you can to make the world a better place.

So thank you, Francisco, from the bottom of my heart, for saying hi to some woman at a food festival on a cold, windy night, and telling her that you remembered.