My Chem Professor

He actually makes chem interesting. I’ll miss him. Every few lectures, he would have a “Tidbit” about something real-world related to the chemical reaction we were studying. He’s discussed Viagra, fake sugar packages, chemicals bees give off, the chemicals plants give off, how coal causes cancer, how ultraviolet light causes cancer, why it’s not a good idea to eat the chemicals you make when you’re a grad student. He often ends his Tidbits with—Well, there you have it. If you can find the answer to [whatever chemical problem is puzzling chemists], then I assure you that you wouldn’t have to worry about another paycheck ever again. You would be so filthy rich. And you know what? You can find the answer with everything you’ve been learning in this class. Think about it! Someone among you is going to someday find the answer. And you will do it all with what you learned here in sophomore chemistry. Let me tell you, if I figured out this chemical reaction, I would not be coming back tomorrow. Sometime, he talks about the chemical reactions that plants or animals can perform in their bodies that we can’t figure out in our labs. For example, the bees—These stupid little bees can do this reaction in a few seconds. They can do it without thinking. And chemical laboratories with machines and money at their disposal, they can’t do it. They can’t figure it out. It’s impossible! We’re so smart, and no matter what we do, we can’t do what the stupid bees can do.

He is quite hilarious. He puts me on the edge of hilarity quite a few times. He has deep grey eyes, grey hair streaked with white, but he is not old. His language and manners of expression are youthful. When I go to chem lectures, I often feel like an old hag—chemistry makes me feel tired, like I have to lug around the weight of all the chemicals and reactions I have to memorize.

I wish I could feel as excited and enthusiastic about chem as he does. He often wears colored T-shirts tucked into a pair of jeans. He walks with his belly slightly leading him. Or his chest puffed out. It’s not as ridiculous as it sounds. You get used to his manner of striding around. He doesn’t have a beer belly, just a slight bulge that lets me know he enjoys eating, fun nights out, etc. When he lectures, he writes on the chalkboard, and he uses a HUGE piece of yellow chalk. That piece of chalk is half the size of my wrist! His own words—I love chalk! I will probably die with a piece of chalk in my hand. I’ll probably be buried with a piece of chalk. His hand must be really strong and flexible if he can write so quickly with that huge piece of chalk. And he writes fast. It’s incredible how fast he writes. He also talks really fast. He’s always misplacing the blackboard eraser, and he would stride back and forth quickly looking for one of them. Then after he has found an eraser and erased the board, he glances over at his other hand and says—I’ve been holding the eraser in my hand all this time! I give up! When he makes a mistake on the board, and a student points it out, and he doesn’t see the mistake, and the student points out the mistake, and he still doesn’t see the mistake, and more students keep pointing out the mistake, and he finally sees the mistake, he turns to us, throws his eraser in the air really high (not at us) and says—I give up!

He’s got a lot of self-confidence when he stands up there. He also has a lot of restless energy. He’s a cool geek, the kind of geek that makes you say to yourself—Gosh darn, if I have to be a geek, that’s the kind of geek I wanna be.

My English Professor Who Makes Me Feel Like A Fool

He has cold blue eyes. He pronounces his opinions decidedly. He sees the weak arguments. He is kind, but a condescending kindness, which lets me know that he is lowering himself to be kind to me. It is amazing to listen to him speak, because his words sour, sore, soar, which makes me want to tell him that I understand, my intellect and spirit understands what he says about humanity. I tried, but his sharp intellect sees nothing reasonable in what I say. He has white hair, a white beard, a long face. When I am not in his presence, I think about his teeth and I think that he has very bad teeth, brown and croaked, crooked, but I do not know. When I see him again, the rest of him makes his teeth unnoticeable. He is impatient with stupidity. He makes me want to utter eloquence, and I am ashamed when I can’t speak a good, reasonable sentence. I want to discover revolutionary ideas about the nature of humanity. Instead, I stumble and discover inadequate thoughts. I discover the ragged holes in my mind. I discover how stupid I am. He makes me want to go back and relearn everything. He makes us laugh, from the horror of what he says, because how he dared to tell us how stupid we were, how stupid other people are. He’s not making fun of others from spite, he recognizes the funny. He makes us laugh out loud the laughter he feels inside, about how poor the English Department is, how beautiful the life sciences building, Once, when a student asked how he was, he answered that there were ants crawling in the drains of his office.

He shares new ideas, shows us the clarity of his mind, because I can see how new pieces of knowledge fits within the vaults of his mind, rich treasure indeed, his mind. How sad that he is not able to stoop, make his opinions more palatable. He is too honest, his standards are so high, how could I like him, when I am raised to be deferential, to hide my thoughts, especially when I think rudely and meanly. It is refreshing and frightening to hear clear thoughts. I cannot look straight into his eyes, because I feel blinded, his intelligence is frightening.

My mind has been raised by women, who teach me demurely, and they cannot tell me about that unemotionally, strict force. I am so used to thinking with my emotions, letting my thoughts pitter patter, shallow, unrestricted. And even then, that’s not right either. Water, falling from a great height, plunges faster and faster, and does that not mean also that the drop hits forcefully?

I have too much romanticism, too much wide-eyed wonder, and so I throw all my hopes together, obsess endlessly, think myself happy because I am so alive and I anticipate so much, that the fall from hope is unbearable. My character is molded by disappointment and I seem to always be losing bits of the future.