professor

BACK TO COLLEGE

I’ve made the decision to head back to college full time to finish my BA. This meant quitting my job as a preschool teacher and heading back to a university as a 33-year-old. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had many anxieties about what it means to be, on average, 12-years older than everyone else attending an university. So, as the first week of classes is nearly at an end, I thought I’d bring you through some of my adventures from the first week of the semester.

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THE LAST TIME I WAS HERE…

            Having a decade between stints of attending college full-time, I’ve had a chance to reflect on how things went in my early twenties.

            In short: it wasn’t pretty. 

            I’m sure there were successful moments, but as I was lying awake in bed, waiting for the sun to rise on another stint as a full-time student, I could only recall the things that were of particular embarrassment. Here’s a few of them:

• I once emailed my Astronomy 101 professor, someone whom I greatly admired, and asked why he wasn’t more famous in his field. I wrote to him, “You seem so capable. Why are you a professor at a community college instead of conducting research at an observatory, or at NASA?” 

            I meant this in earnest, but in hindsight I can see this translates to: “Why are you a loser in your field?” It never dawned on me that not everyone rises to the top of prominence because they want to. There is such a thing as luck and academic politics to consider, as well as geography (observatories aren’t nestled in the farmlands of West Michigan, typically). Never mind family responsibilities, his general expertise, or if he wanted any part of that burgeoning astronomer life (in which, I imagine, consists of a series of Friday nights staring at the stars and uncorking bottles of champagne as new coordinates are punched into the sensitive instrumentation of the observatory telescopes—a real party scene amongst scientists. This isn’t accurate in the slightest, but I can dream).

            The professor never responded to my email, which was gracious in hindsight.

Here’s another:

•  I once woke up late for class and drove in a sleepy haze to campus, running to class only to find a classroom full of strangers there. The professor, whom I had also never seen before, said in all this confusion, “Can I help you?”

            “Sorry, I’m late,” I said, and proceeded to find an empty seat to sit down.

            “Uh, I think you’re in the wrong class,” said the professor.

            “No, I don’t think that’s right,” I said, still in a sleepy haze. “I think you all are.”

            Imagine: an entirely different group of classmates, an unknown professor, and YOU are the one telling the class THEY are in the wrong place. I was like a theater director telling the cast to stop the performance because they were performing the wrong play.

            Just imagine the confusion, which, was probably the same look as everyone else in the class who stared at me.

            Eventually, I emerged from sleepy usurping and realized how wrong I was. I stood up, probably bowed politely (as all the crazies ought to do when they politely leave) and sped out of the classroom. I looked to my watch and saw that it was exactly an hour before I was supposed to arrive for my first class.

            How could this mismatch have happened, then? It dawned on me:

            I hadn’t adjusted the clock in my car to Daylight Savings Time. In my sleepy stupor, I referenced this clock on the road, in which I thought I was slightly late for my class instead of an hour early.

            Oops.

            I later learned that the class I had interrupted was a Psychology 101 course. In hindsight, I figure I gave them a real-life case study.

            So, you’re welcome, Science.

            These and other memories came to mind, but I’ll spare the others for now. It was time to get out of bed and begin another stint of full-time university life at the age of 33.

            Little did I know, things hadn’t changed much.

 ***

‘RACE CAR’ SPELLED BACKWARDS IS ‘STUDENT PARKING’

            Ok, not really. “Race Car” spelled backwards is “Race Car” (as opposed to the old Bugs Bunny joke: “Mud spelt backwards is Dumb”). Strolling through the parking lot towards campus, I noticed cars lapping the already filled parking spaces. That’s because students arriving later in the day might as well have been driving race cars around an elliptical raceway. Most student commuters do laps around parking lots, waiting for a parking spot to open up. This could take hours, so if you’re observant enough to stop and watch the traffic, you could be treated to a miniature Indianapolis 500 in Lot B2. Most students want parking spots up front to limit walking (Hiss! The horror!), so the route most cars follows looked like this:

Many spots open up towards the back of the lot, which results in the route being changed to this over time:

            Needless to say, there were multitudes of classmates missing during my classes, most of them hemmed into bumper-to-bumper traffic, awaiting the rescue of pit crews to help change tires from the wear and tear of driving laps around the Lot B2 raceway.

***

CLASSROOM SEATING

            As I sat down for my first class, I recognized a distinct pattern in where everyone chose to sit. Most students clustered to seats along the exterior, lining the walls and keeping away from the middle aisle. Maybe it’s a social anxiety, but I like to think my classmates pick seats pretending there’s a massive canon pointed directly at them from the head of the classroom and they are taking cover.

            Most professors enter class right as the hour starts, so they wander through this patch of uninhabited seats, wondering why students avoid the middle of the classroom. Then, the professor takes attendance aloud (this is for the first few days until they are familiar with names, then this task is silently done). It is then obvious why there are vacant seats: 

            This is where the professor looks while lecturing. He’ll look to you for acknowledgement, to make sure ideas are setting in.

            It’s unwanted attention and no one wants to be looked at as though they are about to be called forth for jury duty.

            Everyone bows their head as though to say, “Just look somewhere else, please!”

            Well, most keep to the outer perimeter except for a few yuppie students sitting towards the front who adore the professor and want to impress the room with some witty banter.

            And after a few, “Hey, I’ve had you in one of my other classes, right?” and “You’re an English major? I’ll have to get you in touch with another professor I know. He’s into that obscure novel you’re reading, too, haha!”, one can’t but hope for a literal canon to blast the room to smithereens.

***

QUAKING QUAKERS

            The center of campus has an impressive clocktower in the middle of a circular walkway. The opening day of classes invites student groups to get a head start with recruitment, so many organizations set up tables to hand out fliers, hold sign-ups, and invite passersby to attend upcoming events. On my first day, I passed a set of photographers that offered to take a “First Day of School Photo”, which led to a five-minute pitch session on attending a prayer group held on Thursday nights.

            It’s a entrepreneur’s world on the first few days of class.

            Towards the afternoon of my first day, I passed by the clocktower where a pair of older, potbellied men offered pamphlets to join a Quaker campus group. To the discontent of one of the students passing by, he turned round and shouted at the Quakers, “You don’t know anything about Quakers! Quakers take a vow of silence on Sundays!”

            “Ok, do you want to talk about it?” asked the potbellied Quaker passing out the pamphlets, probably to calm the outburst. “Do you want to talk?”

            The disgruntled student turned around and shouted, “Yeah I want to talk! BECAUSE you don’t get it!”

            I stopped to listen into the oncoming argument.

            “Quakers QUAKE on Sundays!!!”

            I nodded, happy about the gift of a great soundbite, even if I had no clue what it meant. Quaker’s quake? Are they fearful on Sundays? Are they literally shaking wildly to appease their God? I couldn’t help but wonder.

            This led to a rabbit hole of other religious acts based on names.

            “If Quakers quake,” I thought, “do you think Christians christen?”

            I liked the idea of Christians gathering on the docks of Lake Michigan to formally bless the launching of boats. On Sundays, they would smash champagne bottles against the hulls of anyone renting at the marina.

            I decided I like being at college if I could hear more things like this.

***

IT’S BERT, NOT BERTIE

            By 3 PM on the first day of classes, I thought I made it through the first day without any major embarrassment. I hadn’t emailed a professor to ask why he wasn’t more successful in his field, nor did I enter another classroom to accuse everyone of being in the wrong place. As my last class started, I thought fortunes had changed for me; maybe I had ceased to do stupid things.

            Nopity. Nope. And nope.

            I have a professor twice in a single day—once in the morning and in the late afternoon. In the morning session, the professor called my name for attendance with little mind, “Robert Hyma?” and he marked me present as I raised my hand. In the second class, he called my name and stopped with recognition, “I have you in another class, right?”

            “Yes,” I said, hating every moment of conversations that happen in front of other people. I could feel all my classmates watching.

            “Robert, is it? Is that what you want to be called?”

            Blame it on the monotony of the question, or that I felt there was an audience, but I wanted to play with this notion. “I can change my name to anything?”

            “Sure,” he said.

            “My friends call me Bert,” I said, feeling brave.

            “Bertie? They call you Bertie?”

             “No, Bert,” I corrected. “Bert. Just call me Bert.”

            “Bertie?” He asked again. “Ok, I’ll call you Bertie if you want.”

            Bertie, which isn’t close to sounding like the name Bert, by the way, was the worst interpretation of my name I’ve ever heard. Luckily, another classmate, a girl I can’t remember, chimed in. “He’s saying Bert, like as in the second part of Ro-Bert.”

            “Oh,” said the professor. “I kept hearing Bertie for some reason.” He smiled through awkward laughs around the class. “Side note,” he continued, “the reason I kept hearing ‘Bertie’ is because I have a grandma named ‘Roberta’ and that’s what we call her: either ‘Bob’ or ‘Bertie’ for short.”

            “Oh,” I muttered. “I wish I would have known that two minutes ago.”

            “But alright, I’ll remember,” said the professor, and moved on to the next person with attendance.

            Thank God, I thought, reflecting on the lesson I just learned: next time, just say your normal goddam name.

            “Ok, I think that’s everyone,” said the professor, concluding attendance. “I’ll try not to babble this afternoon like I did in my morning class. I don’t know what it is about the first day, but I just can’t stop from gabbing at the start. Was anyone in my first class that saw me? Bertie! That’s right, you were there. I just couldn’t stop talking, could I Bertie?”

            Not even a hint of recognition from the guy. At first, I thought he was screwing with me, saying the absurd rendition of my name as a joke, but I was wrong. He was searching my face for recognition, to give credence to his anecdote about the morning class. “Sure,” I said, not knowing how to handle the fact that for the rest of the semester I might be called Bertie.

            “I promise I won’t do that this time,” said the professor, and then he went on to show us a documentary about American Whaling that showed in vivid detail how sperm whales were hunted, harpooned, stripped for parts, and the carcass thrown back to sea.

            I sat there watching the vivid description of whale murder and thought, “Motherf***er! Now I’m Bertie.”

            Oh well, beats my last name, which is often mispronounced. To my confusion growing up, teachers often called out Hyma (Hi-mah) but added an ‘N’ to the end for some reason, making my name ‘Hyman‘. This always drew laughs, and I didn’t realize why until high school when it was explained to me that a ‘hymen’ was a part of female genitalia. People like to laugh at the guy who had a last name that was associated with the vagina.

            At least my first name wasn’t “Dick”, which would have caused people’s heads to explode (I’m sure there’s a sexual innuendo joke in that sentence somewhere).

            So, since my first name has now mutated into Bertie, I suppose my faux full name is Bertie Hyman, which roughly translates to “A grandmother’s vaginal tissue”.

            Hard to live that one down, but it’s a long semester.

            More adventures will surely follow. 

            Stay tuned for more…

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1. “The Walk Home” by Young the Giant
2. “Maybe You Saved Me” by Bad Suns & PVRIS
3. “No Place I’d Rather Be” by The Wrecks

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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,