live, love, relive |

In grad school, I spent a good amount of time wandering this Mission to complete homework assignments for Jacqueline Sharkey’s class. Sharkey was not one of my fans, and I was never one of her pet students (there was none of the rapport developing between us that some of my undergraduate peers described) but that’s okay. She was hands-down The. Best. Photography. Instructor.

The thing about Sharkey is that she’s a journalist. She taught in the J-department. As in, NOT the art department. As in, she’s not so much an artist with an ego as she is a J-school professor. She *wants* us to learn. She showed us all that she knew in hopes that we would take it, run with it, and be *good at using it.* I didn’t know it at the time, but she modeled for me what would later become my own mantra as a writing and photography instructor.

We were shooting with color slide film. For those of you who might’ve cut your teeth with digital photography, color slide film is infamous for being the most unforgiving medium to properly expose. There was no option to recover the shot later, in the darkroom, using print techniques. Our grade depended on the settings we’d chosen in the moment it clicked.

Sharkey was not only the first teacher to help me discover a breakthrough in learning how to use my camera in manual mode, she modeled for me the importance of sharing knowledge with students so that they may find their own way.

I had Sharkey for only one other course as a graduate student. It was a course that studied the press and society, and dove deeply into the ethics of journalism. (I wonder, do they still teach that class?) One of the books she assigned remains in my short-stack on my desk, my stack of indispensable reading from my lifetime of love and experience.

I thought about Professor Sharkey as I wandered San Xavier, envisioning the photos I wanted to take and then successfully adjust my camera settings to capture it.