a career, she decided to attend some lectures at the New School for Social Research while looking into the possibility of becoming an educational philosopher. While at the school, she took a class called "S-- in Ethnology" taught by Elsie Clews Parsons. She enjoyed the class and took another anthropology course with Alexander Goldenweiser, a student of noted anthropologist Franz Boas. With Goldenweiser as her teacher, Ruth's love for anthropology steadily grew. As close friend Margaret Mead explained, "Anthropology made the first 'sense' that any ordered approach to life had ever made to Ruth Benedict." After working with Goldenweiser for a year, he sent her to work as a graduate student with Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1921. She developed a close friendship with Boas, who took on a role as a kind of father figure in her life. Benedict lovingly referred to him as "Papa Franz." Boas gave her graduate credit for the courses that she had completed at the New School for Social Research. Benedict wrote her dissertation, "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America," and received the PhD in anthropology in 1923. Benedict also started a friendship with Edward Sapir, who encouraged her to continue the study of the relations between individual creativity and cultural patterns. Sapir and Benedict shared an interest in poetry and read and critiqued each other's work; both submitted to the same publishers and both were rejected. Both also were interested in psychology and the relation between individual personalities and cultural patterns, and in their correspondences, they frequently psychoanalyzed each other. However, Sapir showed little understanding for Benedict's private thoughts and feelings. In particular, his conservative gender ideology jarred with Benedict's struggle for emancipation. While they were very close friends for a while, the differences in worldview and personality ultimately led their friendship to strand. Benedict taught her first anthropology course at Barnard College in 1922 and among the students was Margaret Mead. Benedict was a significant influence on Mead. Boas regarded Benedict as an asset to the anthropology department, and in 1931, he appointed her as assistant professor in anthropology, something that was impossible until her divorce from Stanley Benedict that same year. One student who felt especially fond of Ruth Benedict was Ruth Landes. Letters that Landes sent to Benedict state that she was enthralled by the way in which Benedict taught her classes and with the way