Dr. Maria DiPalma is a large reason I decided to attend Simpson College. I came down to Indianola for my audition on April 19, 2005. Maria greeted my mother and me, introduced herself and told me about the audition process. The moment my eyes laid upon Maria I knew Simpson would be the school for me. She was wearing the coolest shoes I'd ever seen a professor wear! Admittedly, I hadn't seen many professors, but these shoes were awesome. They had giant rhinestones all over them! Also, without even knowing her last name, I could tell Dr. DiPalma was Italian. She looked a lot like some of the women in my family -- conveniently my mother happens to be full-blood Italian. Unfortunately, you can't tell I'm half Italian thanks to my dad's English/German/Irish genes. I digress. After Maria explained the audition process she asked if I had any questions. I cannot recall what I said, but I can only assume it was funny because I remember Maria laughing or cackling, rather. Maria is a cackler.
For anyone who has known me more than 30 seconds should be well aware of how nerdy I am. So what I’m about to tell you should be no shock. Truthfully, I should probably be ashamed to admit this, but I'm not. When I first got to Simpson in the fall of 2005, I pretended I was at Hogwarts. Like Hogwarts for Harry, Simpson was this new magical (metaphorically) escape from what I considered to be the torturous clutches of rural Iowa. I tried to match my professors to the characters in the Harry Potter series. Maria DiPalma was clearly the understated badass that is Minerva McGonagall. Knowing I had my own version of Professor McGonagall was strangely comforting to me. Maria’s office was full of eclectic oddities like little metal spiders or a stegosaurus figurine or the boar’s head that we used for the madrigal dinner. She always had coffee mugs and teacups strewn around the office. I never told Maria about this comparison, but I can only imagine she’d be pleased to hear about it.
I was never in Maria’s studio, but she was my advisor. We had a mutual understanding that I would figure out my schedule and she’d sign me up for the classes. There wasn’t much advising. Every once in awhile, Maria would recommend I sign up for a different section of a class because she liked that professor better. The only time she really warned me against taking a specific class was for my senior colloquium. This is a capstone at Simpson where seniors take a class that helps them to define who they are and what their contributions to society as a whole can be. Yank, yank, right? Anyway, I was signing up for “Crafting Your Life” with one of the school chaplains. Maria told me point blank that I would hate this class and she didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to take it citing that it was “very touchy –feely and about finger painting.” Unfortunately, this was the only senior colloquium that would fit in my schedule. I would love to say that Maria was wrong and this class was a wonderful learning experience for me and allowed me to grow mentally, creatively and spiritually. However, Maria was 100% right. I hated every damn minute of that class.
It was a project in this class that got me sent to Maria’s office like I was a truant teenager. We were assigned a cornerstone project where each student to create a power point presentation about each of the general education classes we had taken throughout our time at Simpson. At the time the presentation was completed I still had three cornerstones left to take. After I turned in my project, my professor e-mailed informing me that my project was incomplete and I had 24 hours to add the three pictures and paragraphs or I’d fail. Believe you me I wrote an angry response to my professor outlining her syllabus; stating that I had in fact completed the project to her specifications and that if she wanted something different she should have so. Turns out she had changed the project during the one class I missed the whole semester. The next day there was a note for me on the board summoning me to Maria’s office. I figured she needed to talk to me about some props for the opera, except she didn’t. She informed me that my senior colloquium professor had essentially tattled on me and requested Maria give me a talking-to. Though she agreed with my assessment of the situation, Maria warned me against the consequences of e-mailing while angry. She made me apologize to my professor and told me to pretend like I was interacting with a donor – it would be good practice for me. Maria offered me some sage advice that day when she said, “Carolyne, stupid people don’t like it when you point out their stupidity.” Truer words were never spoken, Maria.
It has been a few days since I learned that Maria has stopped her chemo treatments and moved into a hospice center this week after a nine year battle with cancer. While the idea that this could happen has been sitting in the back of my mind, I always believed she'd kick cancer in groin and prevail triumphantly. Dr. DiPalma isn't one to take shit from anyone. She's a tough, straight-shooting broad – a wonderful role model. I can only imagine as she passes on from this world to the next that she’ll be making a grand entrance at a party wearing some elaborately fabulous ensemble with some equally amazing shoes. Someone will hand her a very dirty martini. Someone else will tell a dirty joke, and Maria’s cackle will be heard throughout kingdom come.
