Cheryl Huff has a message for students. And their parents. And their grandparents. And their cousins and friends.
Nothing you ever do in life is a waste of time. No matter how much you bounce around, seemingly aimlessly and randomly, and no matter how many times you hear from others that you need to get serious and “get a real job,” the truth is, you're building experience and perspective that can pay off later.
That payoff may not be in billions of dollars, but there's more than one measure of success in life, and it's never too late to make a difference.
"I know that most of my students will probably have multiple jobs and probably multiple careers after they leave us," says Huff, an Associate Professor of English, Humanities and Philosophy at Germanna.
"And that's something that was certainly my experience. Even when I came out of college as an undergraduate. I had an English degree, and I was a fairly slow typist. So, my dreams of going into publishing took a while to realize and I was happy trying different jobs in the '80s in New York City, it wasn't hard to find a job. It might be hard to find a job you like. But I managed to find many different jobs that I liked. I came out of school and was immediately hired as a temporary paralegal and did that until I was hired to be an assistant shoe-buyer at Bloomingdale's, which gave me a great shoe wardrobe, but I was bored out of my mind. A chance to work in publishing came along. I took that until someone offered me a better paying job [as a headhunter] on Wall Street."
"Wall Street was a great education for me because I didn't know much about money management," Huff says. "I didn't grow up in that world. And it was exciting, a very powerful time for the financial world. I met a lot of interesting, fascinating people. But I really wanted to work in publishing, and I saw a job ad for MS Magazine. Because I had done my undergraduate literature courses at a women's college that had a strong feminist scholarship, I thought it was an incredibly exciting chance to work in a feminist magazine. So, I got the job. I worked as an assistant to an assistant in the beginning, but after about six months, I was hired to sell advertising space. We were competing with big magazines, and they had huge entertainment budgets. Selling ad space for MS was very challenging, but we had Gloria Steinem, and she was already kind of an icon in the feminist community but also in the publishing world, and very respected politically. When we really needed the big guns, we would get Gloria to go on a sales call with us, and the waters would kind of part and everybody would point and say, 'That's Gloria Steinem!' So, it made my job a little bit easier to do that. From that job, I went to a job at the Atlantic Monthly, and after being in publishing for a little while, I found other things that I was very interested in, like cooking."
Huff became a chef for a couple of different catering firms and got training. She also started an antiques business on the east end of Long Island, "because it was fun,” she says. “I like to buy and sell things for more money. I also started trading horses and running a horse farm, until ultimately, I realized what I really wanted to do was go back to school and get a graduate degree."
She found St. John's College. “And I thought what could be more interesting than to go and read my way through the classics and talk about them with other people?”
After finishing that degree, she started teaching.
"The first class I ever taught was philosophy at a community college in rural North Carolina, and my students had a lot of questions. It was kind of a hard sell, convincing them that they really needed to know philosophy. But they came out the other end understanding that it's about humanity. It's about humans. I also realized I wanted to teach English as well. I went back to school again and got another master’s degree in English. And that's what led me here to be teaching both English and Humanities—but all the jobs that I've had along the way prepared me to be a good teacher, to be someone who sees connections between the real world and what we're doing in our classes. I think that students learn that writing is something that will carry through not just in all their classes, but also in their lives and the work that they do. Being articulate. Being able to communicate and being able to persuade people through your writing is a valuable tool and something that students will take with them no matter where they go or what they do. And hopefully they will have lots of great jobs like I did, and hopefully it will lead to a career that they find as fulfilling as I find this career. "
Huff talks to her students about her past work experiences, "and they are always interested that someone can do all that—move forward and change careers."
She's been teaching for three decades now—18 years at Germanna. She could undoubtedly teach at a university but says that while students at universities are usually on a pretty sure path to success in life, faculty at Germanna get to see the trajectory of lives change every day, knowing that they're playing an important role in that.
In her time teaching, she's managed to find ways to branch out and help students in new and innovative ways, like Open Educational Resources, which is reducing the amount students pay for textbooks with the ultimate goal of eliminating that expense. Huff has become a respected advocate for OER, working with Lumen Learning.
Last week, she was part of a two-day VCCS meeting at Germanna which dealt with advancing diversity in the Virginia Community College System through OER. She was recently appointed as a faculty representative for the VCCS on the SCHEV Open Advisory Committee. Huff is happy about progress in OER. “I’m excited that the support for it statewide [is growing], especially with VIVA so much stronger and better organized, which will enhance momentum greatly.” VIVA Open is an OER Commons-hosted website that serves as a repository for open educational resources adopted, adapted, and/or created at Virginia colleges with the support of grants.
Huff earned a master's degree in Shakespeare studies from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, and a master's degree in liberal studies from St. John's College Graduate Institute Annapolis.
She’s married to Michael Morgan, who teaches English as a Second Language at Germanna.
Cheryl is a breast cancer survivor who writes a blog to help other women going through treatment. She would have chemotherapy treatments, then go directly to work at Germanna, rarely missing classes and meetings.
Huff, 66, gave birth to her son Gabe when she was 41.
Gabe proudly writes of his mother, "She has affected the lives of many people all around the world. She radiates bravery, leadership, and intelligence enough to inspire those around her to do well and never give up on their life goals."
She was born in Portsmouth, N.H., but moved often as the child of a father who was in the Air Force.
Growing up, Huff had two older brothers and one younger brother, and her interest in literature has roots in a very practical concept. "As a child," son Gabe writes, "she found that when she was reading, her brothers would leave her alone and not bother her—so she read a lot during her childhood. This is what inspired her interest in education."