Keiler Roberts sits in front of her laundry machine, crying. It’s not the first time she’s cried on the floor, and when her daughter finds her, she recognizes an emergency situation. “Oh no, Mommy! 9-1-1!” Xia shouts as she rushes to her mother’s lap, absorbing the tears with her blankie.
“Keiler has always nurtured a humble balance between curiosity and aspiration,” says Michelle Grabner, one of Roberts’s former professors at UWM and her current colleague at SAIC. “What made her one of my favorite undergraduates are the same qualities that make her an inspiring and effective teacher in the classroom now.”
“She’s gotten so gung ho that we’ll be having conversations and she’ll go, ‘Make that into a comic!’ She’s proud of the fact that she’s funny enough to have all these punchlines.” And Roberts is proud, too. “I don’t care what your report card says. You made me laugh today. Good.”
“I don’t want more emotional intensity. I’m looking for those things I can handle because there’s not so much pressure.” v
