Many people graduate college still unsure of what exactly they want to do with their lives.

Margaret Whitt, professor in the English department, decided she wanted to be a teacher in fifth grade.

“At the end of my street that I grew up on, there was a thousand-year-old live oak tree, and…we would all climb [it]. One day in fifth grade, I planned my life sitting in the tree,” said Whitt.

After 40 years of teaching, Whitt is ending the career she planned in that tree. She is retiring at the end of this quarter.

Whitt will give her final lecture on Tuesday, May 27 at 7 p.m. in Sturm Hall.

“Will I miss it?” asked Whitt of teaching. “Yes. Because that’s like saying, ‘Will you miss your toes? Will you miss your brain?’ But I’m also aware that the time is right to start something different.”

But sitting on that tree all those years ago in Jacksonville, Fla., Whitt knew teaching was her calling. At that time, she said, girls only had four career choices: teacher, secretary, nurse, flight attendant.

After dismissing all the other options, she decided to become a teacher. “I always, always loved being in a classroom…I loved the smell of school supplies at the Woolworths store,” she said.

Whitt began teaching at DU in 1981. She then served as the director of freshmen English for 17 years, until 2004. She has spent the last four years teaching the classes she loves, focusing on American literature, especially from the South.

“I am so lucky that I have a job that I love this much,” said Whitt. “There are a lot of people who work in order to live. I live to work.”

Her love of classrooms and teaching has not faded over the years.

“I genuinely like my students. I care about what they’re doing. I care about their ideas. I care about their lives,” she said. “There’s never been a class ever where there hasn’t been a laugh.”

Whitt’s students genuinely like her, too.

“She’s really engaging. She just goes at teaching from all different directions,” said Tess Phillips, a senior English major.

“My college professor would not have been the same without [her],” said Chelsea Aaron, a junior English major. “Having known her has changed me for the better, both as a student and as a person.”

Whitt’s love of teaching and her students is matched only by her love of the South – the “geography of my heart” – and the writers that have come from there.

“The way I see the world is shaped by my Southern roots,” said Whitt. “The South is an extremely complicated region. I don’t like the South because it’s racist, but I like the South like any person likes the place they call home.”

And home it soon will be again. Whitt is retiring to Gerton, N.C.

“I believe you spend the first third of your life preparing for what you’re going to do; you spend the next third doing it; and then you spend the last third waiting for the surprises,” said Whitt of her retirement. “Now, it’s just time to go see what the surprises are.”

Whitt plans to keep busy in her retirement by writing, researching and taking trips. Some of those trips will take her to interesting places.

“I like to drive around America by myself and take factory tours,” said Whitt. She has already visited the birthplaces of Jell-O and Kentucky Fried Chicken, among many others.

Whitt also enjoys visiting the homes of authors and small towns in the South.

Another passion falls outside of teaching: “I love, love, love board games,” said Whitt.

Whitt will also continue to spend time with one of the loves of her life – Flannery O’Connor, an American writer. “Flannery O’Connor has been my most enduring relationship,” said Whitt.

At 31, Whitt picked up O’Connor’s novel, “Wise Blood.” “I read the first paragraph, and I said, ‘This is probably the most interesting paragraph I’ve read in my life.'” She then returned to school to write a dissertation on O’Connor for her PhD.

“[It’s] my very, very favorite novel,” said Whitt. When Whitt dies, she said, her two kids have orders to put a copy of the novel in her hands.

While Whitt is excited to begin a new part of her life, she said she will miss the classroom and the university atmosphere. Highlights of her time here at DU have included “getting to teach the books that mean the most to me” and reading student writing.

She’ll also miss her colleagues. “I’m in a world where almost everybody around you is smart. I’ll miss that.”

Whitt advises students to find something they are passionate about and stick with it.

“There are fewer people who really know what they want to do with the rest of their lives,” said Whitt. “It’s knowing what your passions are and trying to figure your life doing those passions.”

Sitting in her office, surrounded by a myriad of books and photos of her family, Whitt ends with this:

“I would wish that every student at DU would someday find something that excites them so much that they say, ‘This is worth my life.’ That’s as big as it can get.”