Dr. Robert Lynch, an English professor of American literature and a variety of writing courses, is one of Longwood’s most senior professors. “I have had the unbelievable pleasure of working with people for 26 years,” he said.
Lynch went to Michigan State University twice, receiving degrees in journalism and English. He continued on to get his Master’s degree from Western Michigan University, and his Ph.D. from Indiana State University.
After working on his high school’s newspaper, Lynch thought journalism was the career he wanted to pursue, but when Lynch got to his junior year of college, he discovered that he changed his mind.
“I didn’t want to live by deadlines for the rest of my life,” Lynch said. However, he did not have enough money to change his major to something else, so he just continued with the same major.
After college, Lynch got a job at a small newspaper, where he learned journalism was not the niche for him. He went back to undergraduate college at Michigan State and received a Bachelor’s degree in English.
After his second undergraduate degree, he taught five years in the public high-school system. After those five years, he realized that life was becoming repetitive. He had taught the same books and materials five times and was getting tired of it, so he realized, “It’s time I do something for me.” He knew he needed an intellectual challenge, so he went off to graduate school at Western Michigan.
“I tell people this, and they think it’s silly, but I believe careers find you, and I think that’s what happened for me,” Lynch said. One day in his early life, he was in the library when he saw a book by an author named of William Carlos Williams. He took the book off the shelf, without having any clue of who the author was, and discovered it was poetry.
He was never avidly interested in poetry in high school, but he connected to the poems he read in the books. He could relate to his poetry on a level he did not believe was possible.
“It was purely by accident. I didn’t know I wanted to be a professor, but 26 years later, I’m teaching about William Carlos Williams in my classroom. Life just takes over. There’s always another horizon to get to, and I just followed it,” Lynch said.
He gets to his office in Grainger Hall at 7 a.m. and stays until 3 p.m., spending about 40 hours there during the week. He also spends most of his weekends grading papers and reading books, but he says, “If you’re doing something you love and you’re passionate about it like I am, it’s not work.”
Lynch said, “I love books and I spend a lot of time with them. One of my favorite questions to ask students is, ‘What are you reading for fun?’ and they usually answer, ‘For fun? I’m reading for classes.’ But, I believe you must read for yourself, too.”
“Good teaching is because of the good students. Part of the entire job is connecting with people you care about. The students are the best thing that Longwood has to offer,” Lynch said. “I’m getting to that point where I could retire, but I would miss the interactions with students too much. That’s what gets me up in the mornings. There are things students need that I believe I can provide. Students are what give meaning to my life.”
“At big universities, you sit in class and you’re pretty much just a number. You never really get to know your professors,” Lynch said. He believes one of the big things his university did not provide is contact.
Ten years after his wife’s college graduation, he accompanied her to a choir event she was a part of in college. Immediately, the choir manager recognized her, which Lynch thought should have been impossible, given that she graduated a decade prior. The choir director told Sonia Lynch three of her professors that she had in college were there as chaperones, and they would be very delighted if she went to greet them.
The situation resonated deeply with Lynch, “I realized that would have never happened where I went to school. And that’s what keeps me here at Longwood.”
“Every day is interesting. If I hadn’t have (become) a professor, I would have missed out on the thing that gives my life meaning now,” Lynch said.
