Susan Langenderfer-McMahon
| Susan Langenderfer-McMahon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Sex | F |
| Birth date | 1987 |
| Birth place | Spearfish Lake |
| Father | Mike McMahon |
| Mother | Kirsten Langenderfer |
Susan Langenderfer-McMahon is the youngest child of Mike McMahon and Kirsten Langenderfer. She has two elder siblings Tiffany and Henry. Kirsten was 36 when Susan was born and there is a significant gap between her and her siblings.
Youth
Susan was born in July 1987 with Carrie and Jennifer Evachevski as witnesses, since they drove Kirsten to the hospital and waited with her for Mike to finally arrive. Susan was named by her sister Tiffany after Susan Butcher, an Iditarod dog sled racer and the inspiration for most of the dog sledding in Spearfish Lake. Despite Kirsten's reluctance on the name, Jennifer Evachevski talked her into it.BAR749
Susan was breast fed as a child and Tiffany was her most regular watcher when Kirsten returned to the Spearfish Lake Record-Herald part-time. Jackie Gravengood would also watch her and got her rethinking her reluctance to become a mother.BAR782
Susan would have been just shy of 4 years old when her parents were finally married in May 1991.
At the age of three, Susan needed water wings while swimming in her family pool. Of course, she was also swimming with seven puppies.RM3 At the age of ten, Susan contrasted sharply with what her sister was like at the same age. Susan wasn't particularly interested in dog sledding and otherwise changes her mind about her future career. ""This week it's a nurse. Typical kid. Tiffany decided at her age she wanted to do the Iditarod, and it never once changed, but Susan changes her mind at least three times a week."DW61 At twelve, Susan is known to be a late sleeper, as is her brother Henry. By that point, Susan was comfortable with her body, and with being nude around others.
Susan displayed an early proficiency with German due to her grandmother's (Birgit Langenderfer) influence. Oma Birgit, as Susan called her, often babysat Susan when Kirsten and Mike were working. Birgit was more comfortable with German than English even after more than fifty years in the US, and thus Susan grew up fluent in that language.SU2
Schooling
Susan spent her junior year of High School (2003-2004) in Regensburg, Germany. The book Susan details her story on her return. Already fluent in three languages and expected to be the class Valedictorian, Susan attended Riverside Community College under a dual enrollment arrangement while registered as a Spearfish Lake High School student. At Riverside, she became good friends with Mizuki Takashita.SU11
By 2007 Susan was attending Southern Michigan University with Mizuki as her roommate and went to Europe to spend the summer bicycling with her friends there.SL1
Susan learned Japanese from Mizuki and subsequently taught English in Japan before graduating with a degree in International Business with a Video Production minor. Having her family own the apartment building she lived in during college. "The rent from the other three units not only covers the cost of mortgage payments, there’s been enough left over for me to go to Europe every summer."SK28
Work
After two years teaching English as a Second Language at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China she called in to the Southern Michigan University campus to see if there were any overseas job opportunities not yet listed on the website.SLH3 Dr. Mark Thompson, the University president, offered her an initial twelve month contract to develop four roles at SMU: International Student Coordinator, International Studies Coordinator, Student Relations Coordinator and University Ombudsman. The salary was more than she'd thought and the ability to define a role she could claim as her own appealed to her.SLH3
She was able to rent an apartment from Cody and Jan Archer in the house she had owned when an undergraduate. It became known as the Spearfish Lake House because all the residents that year would be from Spearfish Lake.SLH4
In the chaos when Kyle Reed shot up Activities Day, Susan had to fill in for the PR Director and was named Acting Dean of Students when Charles DeRidder was canned the same day.SLH33 A few weeks later she was surprised that Mark Thompson asked her to take the Dean of Students job. He also suggested that in ten years she would be ready to be named as his successor in a position like ‘Vice-President for Institutional Affairs’.SLH39
