Chapter 8
“On Wednesday, you will sit down for a thirty-minute joint interview with the president for the cover of People magazine. You will be interviewed on camera by People’s national political correspondent…”
The memo prepping me for an interview the week after the inauguration was thorough and thoughtful, as always.
The communications team provided these to ensure that I knew what to expect and had thought through my answers to likely questions.
Our goal in this appearance would be to showcase our first week in the White House.
In a meeting, our teams went over the memo’s questions: “What was going through your mind on Inauguration Day?” “How did you spend your first night in the White House, and how did it feel?” “What drew you to the designers and dresses you chose to wear on Inauguration Day?”
We talked through the answers I’d give. Then the communications team flagged this potential question: “You’re making history by keeping your teaching job at Northern Virginia Community College. Why did you decide to continue teaching?”
“Before you answer that,” someone said, “are you sure you want to keep teaching?”
I’d started teaching English that semester via Zoom on the day before the inauguration. Did they really expect me to drop the class now? I didn’t say anything. So I was asked again, as if they thought perhaps I just hadn’t heard the question the first time.
“If they push you to answer if you’re going to keep teaching, what will you say?”
“I’ll say yes, I’ll do it.”
“Why would you need that?” came the reply.
“Why would I need to keep doing what I love to do?” I said. “Are you really asking me that? Because every day is an adventure. Because I feel inspired to go to work. Because it’s my calling.”
“Well, you’re not going to continue to draw a salary, are you?”
“What do you mean?” I said, trying to stay calm. “I’ve been working there for a long time. I’m paid the same thing everyone else is who does what I do who’s been there that long. You want me to quit, or keep doing the job but give the money back?”
Evidently, they did.
They underestimated how hard I’d fought for my own career, how much it meant to women of my generation to have accomplished that. “Make your own money” is one of the key pieces of advice I give girls and women. “You need to know that if something happens, you can take care of yourself.”
When women came and asked me for work advice, I told them the workplace today seems far more willing to respect difference, tolerate honesty, and look beyond the Ivy League degree and the flashy résumé.
Given my background, I’ve always had a soft spot for a nontraditional path.
I’m more impressed by those who overcome adversity than by those who believe they’re owed something because they played the game right.
When my first marriage ended in my mid-twenties, I was thrown into a financial panic.
I’d married at eighteen. I didn’t have a career or even a college degree.
My then-husband owned a popular college bar that he held on to.
I wound up with less than a quarter of what I imagined to be our shared money.
I swore that I would never be in that vulnerable position again.
I couldn’t very well preach independence for my whole life and then throw it out the window the second I was living in a fancy house because of my husband’s position, could I?
Yet that’s what seemed to be expected of me.
Didn’t I recall how much people had criticized Hillary Clinton for trying to take a policy role in her husband’s administration and how no First Lady had ever held a paying job outside of the White House during her husband’s time in office?
They suggested that I was underestimating how hard it would be to throw state dinners, but, hey, maybe volunteering could be an option!
Had I thought about volunteering? Eleanor Roosevelt volunteered!
Why didn’t I look to Eleanor Roosevelt as a role model?
At first, even Joe wasn’t sure I could pull off a full teaching schedule given my responsibilities as First Lady.
Usually I sought compromise. But this was not one of those times. Teaching was nonnegotiable for me. Once they were done making their case, I said, “Listen, I’m going to keep teaching at NOVA, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to figure it out.”
Eventually my working outside of the White House came to be seen as a badge of honor for the administration. The official word became that everyone supported the idea all along.
The dual roles did require some orchestration.
Many times, I would change into a First Lady outfit in the school bathroom or in a car on the way to an event.
Or after teaching, I would take a twenty-minute cat nap and then get up, do hair and makeup, get dressed, and head out to fulfill my duties as a hostess or guest.
During the pandemic, I taught online from my East Wing office.
I’d go in early before anyone else was there, and I’d set up for my lesson.
Over Zoom, I would teach the students how to write an essay, help them brush up on grammar, or lead a discussion on a piece of literature.
Typically, we’d finish around three, at which point I’d assign homework, upload it into Canvas (a learning management system used by schools), and then shut down my computer for the day.
My job made me a better First Lady. Being on campus grounded me, and helped me stay in touch with what real people were dealing with in a way that can be hard if you’re in a White House bubble.
Every day, I saw the struggles of my students and what they were going through.
For many of them, when campus reopened in August 2021, it was more than ever not just where they received an education—it was a lifeline.
One student came to class a week after his father had died by suicide.
His classmates and I rallied around him, glad he’d trusted us enough to show up rather than drop out and be consumed by the grief alone.
I shared with them literature that had helped me through difficult times in my own life, and encouraged them to see poetry as a refuge.
While I permitted conversation about all sorts of difficult topics, I kept politics outside of the classroom.
If they said, “Dr. B., can I ask you a question?” I said, “If it has anything to do with politics, no.”
They couldn’t have their phones out in class, but I always knew when they were sneaking a look, because their faces would glaze over. One day, I noticed that look on a student’s face, and I went to his desk and reached for the phone. He brought it out from under his desk and put it in my hand.
“I was just googling,” he said.
“What are you googling?”
I looked down at the phone. He was googling me. We both cracked up. It was hard to blend in as I walked to the library or the women’s center trailed by Secret Service agents, but many students remained oblivious to my life outside the classroom.
I liked it that way. I was happy to be Dr. B. for a few hours a week, to be able to do what I did best, to see a clear difference in the students’ work from one paper to the next as things that were hard for them got a little easier.
That’s why the Wall Street Journal op-ed that landed a month after Joe won felt like such a bizarre attack.
It was sent to me by my staff at six in the morning as part of the round-up of news: a hit piece by Joseph Epstein with the headline “Is There a Doctor in the White House? Not if You Need an M.D.”
The article began: “Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
I received my doctorate from the University of Delaware at age fifty-five.
It took me fifteen years to get that degree, plus two master’s (one from West Chester University in 1981 and one from Villanova in 1987), because while raising three kids and teaching full-time, I was only able to take a course a semester.
Going back to school was one of the most meaningful personal decisions of my life, and among the toughest. I did it for myself.
I earned the degree and was happy that my students would be calling me “Dr. B.” from then on.
It felt strange to be attacked for using an honorific that I’d earned. I did wonder if he’d address a man with the condescension with which he chastised me. Somehow I couldn’t see him calling Dr. Woodrow Wilson “kiddo.”
I was buoyed by the support of Michelle Obama and Bernice King, who tagged me online and said, “My father was a non-medical doctor. And his work benefited humanity greatly. Yours does, too.”
My mother was very happy as a homemaker, but I knew that role wasn’t for me.
The summer I turned sixteen, I got a job.
I wanted my own money. I wanted to be able to buy my own things.
I went down and worked at the Jersey Shore the whole summer between eleventh and twelfth grades, living in a girls’ boardinghouse where the landlady was forever yelling, “You girls, stop walking around in your underwear!”
When I told my dad I was going to go for a doctorate, he said, “What took you so long?” as though he’d always expected it of me.
He’d worked his way up at the bank from a teller, and I followed his example into the working world.
Still, because I was a woman, when I bought my first car, even though I had a job, they made my father cosign.
You couldn’t get a credit card in your own name as a woman until 1974!
Your husband or your father had to let you have one.
One of the things I loved about Joe was his support of my education. On the day of my graduation for my doctoral degree, he secretly decorated the driveway leading up to our house with signs saying welcome home, dr. biden.
When I saw that as we returned home, I thought two things: One, I’m a Dr. now! Two, I married the right man.