Dwight Lindley never thought that he’d be back teaching at Hillsdale College. The self-described “under-the-radar student,” who graduated in 2004 with a double major in English and history, was hired in 2011 as an English professor to specialize in Victorian literature.
“I wasn’t one of the guys going out and joining every group,” Lindley said. “My friends and I stayed up late reading poetry. I was the president of the literary honorary, but it was basically a non-entity.”
Lindley’s time as an undergraduate wasn’t completely uneventful. In between late night verse sessions, Lindley played bass guitar in Happiness, a Weezer cover band that made the transition to original music by senior year.
After graduation, Lindley went to Oregon to live with a friend, where he worked on a farm and in a winery. Tending grapes, taking care of sheep, and making wine as an agrarian left him ready to return to the life of the mind in graduate school.
Lindley started graduate school in English at the University of Dallas in 2005. That same year, he married his college sweetheart after her graduation from Hillsdale. As he was in graduate school, his nascent interest in British literature grew stronger and he became greatly interested in the Victorian period.
Lindley’s finishing of graduate school coincided with Hillsdale’s search for a professor with a specialization in Victorian literature, and he was hired as a visiting assistant professor of English.
When asked if he noticed any difference to the school after seven years away, Lindley mentioned that the buildings were much different when he was a student.
“The campus is much more American colonial neoclassical in architecture now than it was back then,” Lindley said, “There was more Stalinist architecture when I was here – these long, cold, functional buildings.“
Lindley said that his experience of Hillsdale as a professor is just as enjoyable as his time as a student was, but in different ways. As a student, he said school exposed him to ideas for the first time and broadened his horizons. Teaching forces him to master a subject in order to teach it effectively, which has its own satisfactions.
Lindley was also pleasantly surprised by the experience living in Hillsdale, a small town, and raising a family here, as well as the way Hillsdale treats its faculty. He says that after seeing other institutions, he can better appreciate the respect and dignity that Hillsdale grants its faculty, something not always evident at other schools.
“I also had no idea Hillsdale was actually a nice place to live,” Lindley said, “I’ve realized what a good place it is to raise a family. There’s a lot of other good families, and there’s good schools and good churches, there’s a small enough amount of people that you can know a lot of people in the town.”
Assistant Professor of English Stephen Smith, who taught Lindley in his own first year teaching at Hillsdale, said he was struck by Lindley’s intelligence and understanding while a student.
“Dwight unites happily the love of English and Latin, and he brings real experience with classical rhetoric and philosophy as well. We’re delighted to have him in the department,” Smith said.
Lindley looks back on his time at Hillsdale as a time of “waking up” to new ideas and finding out what he is interested in.
“When I left Hillsdale, I had a sense primarily of my inadequacy, what I didn’t know,” Lindley said. “Then I went out and really continued getting my education. It was in graduate school where my intellectual life really flowered and became what it is today.”
