Did you have a favorite teacher in school?

I’ve been thinking a lot about former teachers and professors lately, especially Ms. Cherry, my 6th grade social studies teacher, and Michael Berk, my architecture professor at Mississippi State. I’ve actually thought about these two many times since taking their classes because both of them saw me in a way and at a time when it made a deep impact on me.

In astrology, the planet Saturn is considered our cosmic teacher. Last Friday, the 13th, Saturn moved into the sign of Aries for a two-year visit it hasn’t made since 1996-1999.

What lessons were you learning during those years?

In 1996, I was eleven. I’d just discovered a budding passion for writing. Synchronistically, as Saturn returns to Aries again 30 year later, my mind is once again consumed with the pleasure and fulfillment of writing. At eleven-years-old, I’d started writing short stories in a royal blue, spiral notebook. I ended up losing the notebook, and Ms. Cherry found it and read it.

One morning, she returned it to me. In front of the whole class, she told me, “I showed it to Ms. ___, and I said, That girl can write!”

Although Saturn gets a bad reputation for being strict, it ultimately wants us to live our full potential and seeks to realign us with our purpose. Ms. Cherry, my literal teacher, was a Saturnian influence in my life. With her perceptive powers, she spoke a single sentence that awakened my sense of possibility.

Several years later, another Saturnian influence tried to offer gentle and compassionate guidance. My architecture professor, Michael Berk, asked me one day as I sat in his small office: “Would you rather wake up every day and go to the architecture studio, or would you rather wake up every day and write?” Professor Berk saw me before I was ready to see myself.

But I ignored his subtle, Saturnian guidance, despite how depressed I felt in architecture. It took a much firmer and more direct approach from Saturn to finally get the message across. The next semester, a visiting professor gave me the “D” I deserved, which shook me awake. With this harsher lesson, I conceded that architecture wasn’t it for me, and I transferred to the English department, where I belonged.

Saturn gets firm when we’re ignoring its early, more gentle guidance and nudges.

While Saturn travels through Aries every 30 years or so, this time is quite unique because it’s making a conjunction with Neptune at 0 degrees of Aries this Friday, February 20th.