Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Item 1 - Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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Details
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  - Publications (documents)
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  - Text
- Source institution
  - Western Carolina University
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  - HL_WesternCarolinian_2013-03-15_Vol78_No13_CampusLife_B03
Transcript

The Western Carolinian FEATURES March 15, 2013 Before They Were Educators: M. Colby Murphy Copy Editor & Designer Dr. Hal Herzog isa man beyond description. He is an atom, constantly bursting with electrify- ing energy as an evolu- tionary psychologist, finding answers to ques- tions no one ever knew to ask, a storyteller, sharing his knowledge artistically in forms ac- cessible to anyone. To students at Western Carolina University, he is the exciting and charismatic professor who never ceases to keep the young minds in his classroom tick- ing toward a new and profound understanding of the psychological and biological world. Herzog was born, and spent most of childhood, in Miami, Fla. However, he did not live in the fast- paced big city picture of Miami that first flashes across the mind. We lived in a real blue collar section of the city, said Herzog. Where I lived was the South. We had grits at school and everything. So even though it was Miami, it was still re- _ ally southern. Herzogs family moved to New Jersey when he was 13 after his father, an airline pilot, was transferred. T hated New Jersey, said Herzog. I hated the New York suburbs and the whole culture. After graduating high school and desperate to escape the city, Herzog found himself attending college at a small school in the mountains of West Virginia. I was basically a New Jersey kid living in this really rural area, in _ coal mining country, at this little college in this little town, and I just loved it, said Herzog. I felt like I was a hillbilly wrongly transported | to urban America, but finally there I was in my hillbilly roots. There was something real about it. It was the opposite of New Jersey, and thats what I liked about it. I liked hanging out in bars with coal miners and people that worked for a living as opposed to get- ting on a commuter train and going to New York. Following his sopho- more year at school in West Virginia, Herzog found a chance to study . Overseas and jumped aboard with no question. T did a junior year abroad in Beirut, in Lebanon, and I liked it so much there I stayed and graduated, said Herzog, so my bachelors degree is from the American University in Beirut, [and] its in Arabic. I was there during the 67 war and got evacuated out and everything. It was high adventure ...so exotic, so different. I just loved being in a totally different culture. Unlike most students studying abroad today, Herzog did not live with a host family. T lived in a dorm the first year, and I got an apartment with friends the next year, said Herzog. Even though its called the American University in Beirut, they could only have 200 American students there, and almost all of them were junior year abroad students. So it was very hard to get to stay and graduate. You had to swear you'd go back. I got to stay be- cause my girlfriend at the time, her father was head of the graduate school. [Usually] the only students that got to say where kids of oil com- pany executives or state department kids, so Im one of the rare individu- als, arare American, that has a degree from the American University in Beirut. After graduating with a bachelors degree in psychology in 1968, Herzog, like many other young men at the time, immediately enlisted in . the U.S. Army. T spent three months working my way back to the United States, hitch- hiking and occasionally jumping on airplanes, Herzog recalled. And once I was back, I went straight into the army. This was the height of the Vietnam War, so ev- erybody my age, unless you were a conscientious objector, which was very hard to get where I was, went into the army. My choice was either join, and if you joined you stayed for three years, or get drafted and stay for two years. But, if you got drafted, there was a very good chance youd wind up withagunin your _ - sitting in an office and hand in Vietnam in the infantry, which I did not want to do. In addition to serv- ing his country, Herzog found a chance to work in his chosen field of study in the army. T volunteered to be a psychiatric medic, said Herzog, after all Thad a degree in psy- chology, but what they didnt tell me was that I had to become a combat medic first. So after getting certified asa combat medic, they sent me to psychiatric medic school, and I spent my time in the army working on a psychiatric ward. As fate may have had it, the ward Herzog was assigned to was in Geor- gia, not Vietnam. T was extremely lucky, Herzog admitted. All my dreams came _we ; r Pla [clajelo|s MMs /ejain pajaitje |. Mc alal a Ps} O[N| ALTA vlalR ale true: I never had to shoot at anybody, I found a job in my field and looking back on it, I couldnt have been in a better situation in the army. Herzog continued, My unit was like *M*A*S*H*, we all hated the army, we didnt believe in the war, none of us believed in the war. I was sup- posed to be living on base but had an illegal apartment off base, and my friends and I were like alright how can we carve out as freea nitch as we can in this insane system called the army. As a psychiatric medic, Herzog worked first-hand with the very serious psychological traumas of war. The people we got did not have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They were more floridly psychotic, said Herzog. People with PTSD go to war, come back and have problems after theyre back. The people we got didnt make it that far. They were so mentally unstable they got sent back. There were lots of drugs there [in Vietnam], so these people are smoking dope, theyre smoking opium, theyre taking LSD and theyre out there in the bushes with people shooting at them. What could be a bet- ter recipe for paranoid schizophrenia? Its the . perfect recipe for people wigging out in really serious ways. After three years of working in the psy- chiatric ward, Herzog found himself losing faith in his field of clini- cal psychology. T realized that for people that were really, really sick, the ones that needed the most help, clinical psychol-_ ogy wasnt going to help them, Herzog admit- . ted. The talking cure, talking, was not going to help them. They had no insight into their own situation. They were hearing voices in each - ear and radio beams from Satan coming in through their teeth. Normal psychology just wasnt going to help those guys, and they were the people that re- ally needed the help. So I was disabused of the notion of going into clinical psychology, continued Herzog, but I did realize that college professing is a good gig. You dont have to wear.a coat and tie, you pretty much do what you want, you dont have much ofa boss, you make enough money, you get the sum- mers off. Its a really good gig. Herzog applied for Dr. Hal Herzog Submitted Photo | got my PhD in a year, studying cockfighting in Madison County, said Herzog, a pro-~ fessor of psychology at WCU. masters programs at any school that did not require an application fee, with the modest goal of teaching at the com- munity college level. > The University of Tennessee sent back, Herzog recalled, but they had gotten rid of their masters pro- gram. So the letter said, Youve been accepted to our program, but they had crossed out mas- ters and wrote PhD. I thought, Well hey, thats really nice. Herzog decided to shift his academic focus from clinical psychol- ogy to animal behavior, something that had fas- cinated him since child- hood, for his academic studies in Tennessee. When I was a kid, I collected snakes. I like snakes, and reptiles, and stuff like that. Well it turned out Tennessee had one of the two people in psych departments in the United States that studied snake behavior, and I didnt even know that when I went there. The guy himself was just @la|=[o]o]s[~}olm afro |Nfol=la}o: =[a}olo|s|o o|m|~ out of graduate school. So I basically hooked up with him and worked in his lab. _ Herzog soon found that there was a steep decline in available jobs at the time for univer- sity professors with doctoral degrees, so he decided to re-approach his original plan to obtain simply a mas- ters degree and apply for work teaching ata smaller college. T studied alliga- \ tor behavior for my masters thesis, said Herzog, and got a job at Mars Hill College in Western North Caro- lina, which was great because I always loved the mountains. After I was there for a couple of years, they decided they liked me and wanted me to go on ten- ure track but I had to get a PhD. Sol called up Tennessee... Mars Hill gave me a year off, and I got my PhD in a year, studying cockfighting in Madison County. Herzog recalled, Those guys [cock fight- Cosi =[olajolo|rjo|mla = |rofon}oo| o> x[s]ofelolalrlo| alrjeolo o|@[rfalalo ers| loved me. I told them what I was doing, = so ld goin there with = stopwatches and all this stuff, and they liked = meenoughthatthey & didnt make me pay the admission fee. Then 2 they let me sit up in the~ announcers booth, and Id get data, which was ~ great. What I liked was. the duality of being a college professor by day then just hanging out with the s--- kickers on Saturday night. I had some real adventures at the illegal rooster fights. Several of Herzogs experiences and studies, including these cock- fights, can be found in wonderful detail in his 2011 book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat. Ultimately, Dr. Herzog is an extraordinarily unique and well-rounded educator and scholar who is never without an amazing story to tell. His charismatic personality is a perfect combination of intelligence, wit, excite- ment, open-mindedness and understanding. SOS GIG =fole wlolo ses >

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Description

The Western Carolinian is Western Carolina University's student-run newspaper. The paper was published as the Cullowhee Yodel from 1924 to 1931 before changing its name to The Western Carolinian in 1933.
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  - Western Carolina University
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  - Date original: 2013-03-15
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  - Dimension: 22.75" x 11.5"
  - Pages: 12
- Subject - Topic
- Location
  - Jackson County (N.C.)
  - Cullowhee (N.C.)
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  - Western Carolina University
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  - WCU Students Newspapers Collection
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  - HL_WesternCarolinian_2013-03-15_Vol78_No13
- Repository
  - Western Carolina University Hunter Library

Western Carolinian Volume 78 Number 13

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