Robert Winthrop Watson (1925-2012) received a Bachelor of Arts with honors in economics (1946) from Williams College; studied art history (1946-1947) at the University of Zurich, Switzerland; and received a Master's (1950) and a PhD (1954) in English literature from Johns Hopkins University. From 1953 to 1987, he taught English, poetry, and creative writing at Woman's College of the University of North Carolina/UNC Greensboro. In addition to his role as a professor, Watson was a novelist, playwright, and poet. He married Betty Rean in 1952. Betty Rean Watson (1928- ) graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in art history (1949). she received a Master of Fine Arts (1965) from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Watson studied lithography with the abstract-expressionist John Opper and has painted portraits of poets Randall Jarrell and Allen Tate. She has exhibited in galleries in Chapel Hill, Greensboro, New York City, Norfolk, and Provincetown, as well as many other cities. Robert Watson talks about his education and how he came to Woman's College in 1953. He explains how the college offered him and other writers the opportunity to make a living teaching while pursuing writing. Watson recalls that the college could not afford to hire PhDs, so they hired people like Caroline Gordon, Randall Jarrell, Allen Tate, Peter Taylor and other writers as English professors. He mentions the number of famous writers such as Robert Frost, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich, William DeWitt Snodgrass, and many others, who came to the college during the annual Arts Forum/Arts Festival to give lectures, participate in panel discussions, and judge student works. Watson gives his thoughts about the writings of T.S. Eliot, Randall Jarrell, Robert Frost, and Ezra Pound. He believes that Jarrell called Woman's College the "Sleeping Beauty" because of his fondness for fairy tales, his women students who did not talk much in the classroom, and his desire to wake up the students to a wider world. Watson believes the reason Jarrell said that he had a "semi-feminine mind and poetic" was because he had empathy and understanding for women. Betty Watson recalls that women students at her alma mater, Wellesley College, as well as Woman's College, did not talk very much or ask many questions in the class room. She attributes this to the position of women in society during the 1950s and 1960s. She mentions the college rules and regulations such as not wearing slacks or shorts on campus, signing in and out of the dormitories, and forbidding men in the dormitories. Watson remarks that Randall Jarrell was not a "man's man" although he loved tennis, football, and cars. She states that he was very sympathetic to women, very positive when evaluating his students' writings, had a marvelous mind, and wrote and spoke in clear and simple terms. Watson also recalls Jarrell's mental decline before he died in 1965.