In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Ruth: A Person to Trust and a Place to Belong “[I] knew that I had like a responsibility if I was going to make it and not fall through the cracks, like so many LGBT youths do . . . to be a safe person for LGBT youth to go to.” S tanding in a hilltop field on the small campus where Ruth attends graduate school, I cannot help being struck by the idyllic feel of the surroundings: the bright sun of an early fall day, the pair of Frisbeeplaying dogs on the lawn, the inspiring vista of the city skyline in the distance . With the typically idealized perspective of an outsider, this strikes me as a perfect environment in which to attend graduate school, and I am happy for Ruth that she has made such a place her home. I meet Ruth in the vestibule of one of the campus’s well-ordered libraries, and her status as a fully integrated member of the academic community is immediately apparent. Library staff smile with recognition as Ruth guides me through the front lobby and book stacks toward a conference room she has reserved, in which we are able to conduct our interview undisturbed for well over an hour. Ruth was nineteen and less than two years out of high school when she first entered the study;1 now, six years later, she has a master’s degree in divinity and has begun work toward her Ph.D. at Morgan Divinity School, part of a larger theological institute on the West Coast. In addition to her own studies, which are related to bioethics and the ethics of the health-care industry, Ruth serves as a teaching assistant in courses on ethics and antioppressive education and teaches a course in youth development to master’s degree students preparing to enter the ministry. Ruth’s comments about her 1. Ruth’s Phase I interview was conducted and analyzed by Constance P. Scanlon. Sections of this chapter, based on Phase I of the research, are adapted from Sadowski, Chow, and Scanlon 2009. 3 A Person to Trust and a Place to Belong 61 work at Morgan Divinity suggest that, after a period of professional soulsearching , she has comfortably come into her own: I thought I had a call to Unitarian Universalist ministry, like, upon graduating from college, and I knew that I wanted to go for a Ph.D. eventually. . . . [But] I ended up taking my first bioethics class with my advisor here and fell—just fell in love with health-care ethics. . . . And I was also already interested in the antiracism work. I’d done a lot of antiracism training back east and then with the UUA [Unitarian Universalist Association]. So I got to fuse both of those by doing ethics. And then I was just really suddenly happy. My grades improved. I was interested in what I was doing. So that’s kind of what drew me to it. And I think I have always had a latent desire to be a teacher. My mother was a fourth-grade teacher, and I don’t know whether I inherited it or what, but certainly it was kind of—I kind of became more open to following in her footsteps, but not in fourth grade, you know. No elementary school for me! But—so teaching and ethics, a combination that really just now feels really natural. In addition to Ruth’s obvious passion about the subject matter of her work, being a teacher and mentor—sharing her knowledge and experience with younger or less experienced people in various ways—is a central component of her professional life that comes up repeatedly in our interview. When I ask Ruth to describe herself, she uses a telling variety of adjectives that focus typically on physical and personality traits but also on her role as a mentor to others in the divinity school community: friendly, mentoring, funny, redhead. Beyond Ruth’s youth ministry course and teaching assistantships, she started an antiracism group at the divinity school three years ago and facilitates sessions “for white students to work on issues of racism related to our community, and then our own internalized biases.” She also had recently served as a youth coordinator at a local YMCA, helping first-generation college applicants understand the process. In this capacity, she recalls mentoring a young woman who came out to her as lesbian and whom she referred to the local LGBTQ youth support group. In...

Share