It was in the first week of school, when students are still feeling out their teachers and teachers are testing their students’ limits that I came to know Rebecca Scott.  In an essay introducing herself and her aspirations, she wrote that she wanted to learn to be more courageous, to get over her shyness.  She had been too afraid of taking drama in her freshman year because she was terrified of being on stage, she wrote.  So in my typical fashion, I wrote her a note, asking her to just stand up and sing a song for the class.  Just like that.  And as students quietly focused on their writing, each absorbed in his thoughts, she shot me a raised eyebrow.  I just nodded.  She stood hesitantly, but then belted out “Tomorrow” from Annie, her voice getting stronger with each line in her best Broadway voice.  When she finished, the class applauded, and she sat.

I like to think that it was her breakout moment, and through the rest of the year, she never failed to impress me with her unfailing willingness to put it all on the line – in discussion or debate, in every essay.  She took risks, and she succeeded.  I often tell my students that real writing is like opening a vein and letting one’s blood drip onto the paper, and though the image may be graphic, real writing is like that.  It is never safe and sanitized.  Many students tend to fear writing that exposes too much about them because then they are vulnerable, and they perceive any critique as a personal attack.  I get that.  I, too, fear the spotlight.  I am no performer, to be sure, but art is meant to be shared, and writing that is art leaves a part of the writer there on the paper for all to see.  Rebecca quickly understood that.

I fondly called her Great Scott, after the Mark Twain expression later popularized by the Superman comics, and she continued to use that nickname through the years.  She did eventually get into drama, fell in love with the theatre, but at her very core was art.  She lived art – whether it was writing, drawing, theatre, or designing, it was all about art.  And when she graduated from Cox in 2009, I nudged her in the direction that she was already leaning – to Bennington College in Vermont – where one with an artistic bent might find community.

And that’s when her brain tumor was discovered.  Life became tumultuous.  She left Bennington to undergo treatment.  There were numerous surgeries, chemo, experimental drug regimens, but she fought with that same indomitable spirit that allowed her to get up and sing to my class, and for a while, it seemed to work.  Living years past the original prognosis, she re-enrolled in college, this time at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and did well.  She started a blog about her fight with the brain tumor to give hope and a voice to others suffering, and through her writing urged support for more research.

Of course, life is not something that we control.  And though we define ourselves by our actions and can redefine ourselves through conscious choices, as Great Scott did, we cannot will as we will, as Schopenhauer wrote.  Rebecca lost her fight with the brain tumor on Nov. 13.  But for me she will always define courage.  Courage is not championing a cause that everyone thinks is right.  Courage is not about putting on a show because others are watching.  Courage is about embracing what is right and being true to oneself  whether anyone is watching or not.   When we suppress our fears – of embarrassment, of humiliation, of being wrong, or of being in a minority – then magic is really possible.  Great Scott understood that magic and embraced it.  She was a writer, a thinker, and an artist.  She will be missed.