Java Mill Flower
This is post 6 of Section II. To begin at the beginning, go here. Section II begins here.
Gregory was relaxed. He wore jeans to class and asked all the students to call him by his first name. He was often seen biking around campus with an olive drab knapsack slung across his back. He kept his office hours at the Java Mill and sometimes met his classes there. Though not gifted as a lecturer, he had a knack for reading aloud with a quiet intensity that made him a natural in Romantic poetry classes, and when he looked into Chloe’s eyes and asked her how a poem made her feel, or whether she had noticed any hegemonic tendencies in a particular passage, she, like her classmates, felt exalted in the heady atmosphere of literary criticism.
Gregory had liked Chloe even though she was not a great scholar like her father or a flamboyant musical genius like her brother or a crusader for social justice like her mother. At the time she had never stopped to consider why Gregory liked her. He had simply plucked her from the obscurity of the Honors English Seminar and transplanted her to the hothouse of his digs above the Java Mill, where she bloomed exotically.
He found her enchanting. While the chief romance of his life was with himself, its dramatic impact depended on various supporting characters, of which she gradually became the principal. He was first attracted to her because she was beautiful but paid no attention to that. Indeed, she had an appealing way of excluding everything but himself from her attentions, without becoming either clingy or overbearing. She had what seemed to him an otherworldly quality, as if she had been born into the wrong century. When he was swept away by his passions and found it convenient to pay attention to her she focused on satisfying his desires with a calm intensity; when other matters arose to distract his courtship she turned quietly to her family, her books, or some other avenue whose charms were equally unfathomable to him.
On one occasion, directly after her graduation, during a period when he had been busy investigating the ontological possibilities of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic with an associate professor of philosophy, he learned that Chloe had actually gone off to Florence to study Italian Renaissance painting without so much as a by-your-leave. He believed himself in agonies. On her return he wrote to her at her parents’, lamenting his loneliness, and she came to visit. He then stopped calling the associate professor and several other female acquaintances. After a few weeks he allowed Chloe to answer the phone. This, they both understood, was tantamount to a commitment, and Gregory found that it had the added advantage of deflecting any expressions of annoyance from his former playmates. Chloe stayed.
Continue
Gregory was relaxed. He wore jeans to class and asked all the students to call him by his first name. He was often seen biking around campus with an olive drab knapsack slung across his back. He kept his office hours at the Java Mill and sometimes met his classes there. Though not gifted as a lecturer, he had a knack for reading aloud with a quiet intensity that made him a natural in Romantic poetry classes, and when he looked into Chloe’s eyes and asked her how a poem made her feel, or whether she had noticed any hegemonic tendencies in a particular passage, she, like her classmates, felt exalted in the heady atmosphere of literary criticism.
Gregory had liked Chloe even though she was not a great scholar like her father or a flamboyant musical genius like her brother or a crusader for social justice like her mother. At the time she had never stopped to consider why Gregory liked her. He had simply plucked her from the obscurity of the Honors English Seminar and transplanted her to the hothouse of his digs above the Java Mill, where she bloomed exotically.
He found her enchanting. While the chief romance of his life was with himself, its dramatic impact depended on various supporting characters, of which she gradually became the principal. He was first attracted to her because she was beautiful but paid no attention to that. Indeed, she had an appealing way of excluding everything but himself from her attentions, without becoming either clingy or overbearing. She had what seemed to him an otherworldly quality, as if she had been born into the wrong century. When he was swept away by his passions and found it convenient to pay attention to her she focused on satisfying his desires with a calm intensity; when other matters arose to distract his courtship she turned quietly to her family, her books, or some other avenue whose charms were equally unfathomable to him.
On one occasion, directly after her graduation, during a period when he had been busy investigating the ontological possibilities of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic with an associate professor of philosophy, he learned that Chloe had actually gone off to Florence to study Italian Renaissance painting without so much as a by-your-leave. He believed himself in agonies. On her return he wrote to her at her parents’, lamenting his loneliness, and she came to visit. He then stopped calling the associate professor and several other female acquaintances. After a few weeks he allowed Chloe to answer the phone. This, they both understood, was tantamount to a commitment, and Gregory found that it had the added advantage of deflecting any expressions of annoyance from his former playmates. Chloe stayed.
Continue
posted by Hobbes at 7:50 PM
7 Comments:
I had an egotistical prof similar to Greg. He accused me of plagiarizing and was hell-bent on having me expelled. When we found a mistake that was so deeply embeded in the structure that it proved it was impossible to have been copied, he would not apologize, but gave me a B stating the lower grade was due to the mistake. He then had my writings published in a literary magazine as if he was doing me a favor, but with no pay for them, I felt ripped off. He was informal like Greg, but the other students claimed they went along with it to get a better grade. They were perplexed that I had aced his class in spite of the fact we hated each other. Perhaps like Ed's attitude toward his kids, Greg may have a deeper level of sensitivity and decency than what he actually projects.
Ontological possibilities of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. Indeed!
All kinds of Omigoshical possibilities here!
T&I: I was also suspected of plagiarizing, on my first college paper! I was naive and thought the teacher wanted to discuss it because it was so bad, but actually, it was because she thought it was too good to be true. She was not like Greg, however, but very correct.
On the other hand, I have also wrongly suspected a student of plagiarizing, but after talking to him I could tell I was wrong, and apologized. I hope that he, like me, took it as a compliment. At the time I was a pretty cool, informal GTA.
So you used to like students?
My verifier is ssyrp. I was trying to decide what to fix for supper.
Those were Yale students, Doug.
P. S. And I still love my (mostly Asian) violin students as if they were my own. I nag and criticize them just as much.
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