Well, you really don't get to be a historian without encountering some real influential--in both a good and bad sense--professors during the long training on the way to becoming a historian--in my case that meant five years as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame and seven years in graduate school at the University of Virginia. Both schools had big-time athletic programs that made my stays at those schools very enjoyable.  I had some great professors in all of my years as an undergraduate (I'm guessing about 160 credits.) and then as graduate (maybe 60 credits)--and I have also had some real, real, real horrible experiences in the classroom.   Don't even think that you can outdo me with tales of the bad in higher education!  Here I would like to single out four professors who really helped me get to my end goal of teaching and studying history, although when I first went to college I was planning on becoming a chemical engineer.

Take a moment and read some of my comments about these four guys.  Unfortunately all are dead now except for Professor Sablinsky--must be the highly stressful job of being a historian!  I learned much from each of them, different things, some not very academic, but what did they all have in common, you might ask:  (1) they generally all strove for excellence; (2) they respected you; and (3), most important, they were all demanding and accepted no excuses when it came to academic performance.

Bernard Norling, University of Notre Dame
Thomas Hammond, University of Virginia
Walter Sablinsky, University of Virginia
Hans Schmitt, University of Virginia.