danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

Becoming socially acquainted with one of your former college professors must count as one of life’s rare and unexpected pleasures. I know this because I have had the fortune.

I studied eighteenth century English literature in college, and stuck to that as best I could, straying a century in either direction only occasionally. But as part of my program I had to take one semester of American literature, about which I knew almost nothing. I recall being nervous about it. “Early U.S. Novels” was the title of the course, and we covered works written up to around 1820. None of the titles we studied are famous today, and some never were famous.

The teacher of this course was a youngish fellow with a beard who always wore sweaters. His was the only college English course I took that didn’t require a long term paper or two. Instead, we had a traditional mid-term and final exam. While this might seem less intimidating, his exam was among the hardest I’d ever seen. If I recall correctly, it worked something like this:

We had to choose two of three or four possible questions to answer. In each answer we were required to compare several of the works we had read that semester. But we had to choose wisely, because the titles we compared in one question could not be brought up again in the second question.

I remember spending forty-five minutes just figuring out which novels to compare for each question, formulating an argument, before I set pen to paper. So it was hardly surprising when I ran out of time. I recall being the last person to leave the classroom, apologizing in advance for what I was sure was an awful exam response.

When that semester ended, I only occasionally ran into this professor around Turlington Hall. He’d always tell me he enjoyed hearing me on the radio. Then, once I was in grad school, I lost almost all contact with anyone in the English Department.

So it was a tremendous surprise when, last year sometime, I arrived late to a house warming party for a friend, and upon walking through the door I was greeted by my former professor. I was grateful that at that instant I did not experience one of my patented I-don’t-remember-you-or-where-I-know-you-from moments. I did remember him. He was with his wife, who was acquainted with my friend who was throwing the housewarming party. They made a charming couple, and we all had a nice time chatting over dinner.

Barely any time passed before I saw my former professor again – this time at a downtown festival. And later still, I saw him and his wife at a craft show, where she had a booth selling homemade soap. Finally, a month or so ago, Miriam and I were invited to dinner and a movie with our housewarming friend. We met up at Blue Highway Pizza in Micanopy. Once again, my former professor and his wife were there. It was cold outside, and we waited forever to get a seat, which was at an outside table. Then it took hilariously long for our food to arrive. But it was fine, because I had a chance to chat with my teacher about a number of things I had been curious about for some time.

I asked what he made of what was happening to the English Department at UF. From what I could see, the number of professors who taught traditional literature—poetry and prose from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century—was in decline. (Indeed, my main guy, who has since retired, once told me that when he arrived at UF in the early 1970s, he was one of several professors who taught eighteenth century English literature, and colleges were flying in recent Ph.D. grads to interview for jobs in English departments. Since his departure, I understand that no one teaches courses on Samuel Johnson, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, or the early novelists like Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, or Samuel Richardson. God knows who teaches advanced exposition.) My teacher-turned-friend expressed grave concerns about the future of reading itself. Most students, he lamented, simply do not read books any more. How English departments at colleges and universities adapt when students’ interests no longer include literature remains to be seen. My prediction is that the English major will cease to be associated with the study of literature at most universities, and move more toward the study of film, blogs and websites, and graphic novels and comics. The major will be renamed something like “Media Studies”. A select few schools will continue to have a strong focus on literature, and the dwindling ranks of students interested in novels, poetry, and plays (as literature rather than theater) will seek out those schools. But who knows. English departments like the one at UF may limp along for another generation, only offering the occasional literature course taught by a grad student.

But it wasn’t just school talk with my former professor: we also talked a lot about classical music. He seemed very interested in my thoughts about the recording industry, and asked my opinion on collecting recordings.

After we finished our dinner at Blue Highway, our plan was to head out to a star-gazing event hosted by the local astronomy club, then catch a movie at the Ocala Drive-in. But by the time we paid our check, the movie in Ocala was already well underway, so we scratched that off the list. The question was whether we’d still have time to make it to star-gazing. I was doubtful, but my professor’s wife was hopeful, and so we took off down County Road 234 until we reached a farm on the far eastern edge of Paines Prairie. It was extremely dark, and the number of stars visible so exceeded what one sees in a city, that I would have been happy even without the telescopes. But there were telescopes, and we took turns looking at Jupiter, the Pleiades, and this and that. I told my former professor about going star gazing with my father as a boy. It was such an affecting experience for me that even today, decades later, I still think about it any time I find myself looking up at a truly dark sky.

And as we walked back to the car and said goodnight, I knew that was the end of it. My former professor had already moved to New Orleans to begin teaching at a university there.

It was fun while it lasted.

Filed under: Friends, Musings, School on March 28th, 2013 | No Comments »

Today is the first day of fall classes at the University of Florida. Tens of thousands of students will be on campus this week, many for the first time. I know what they are feeling: hope that their teachers will be friendly and reasonable; anxiety that their course requirements may be overwhelming; annoyance that their schedules involve a three-hour gap in the middle of the day that is too long for a simple lunch, but not long enough to go home and come back. These are first-world problems, of course, but they are genuine vexations to college students.

Today, for the first time in six years, I will not be sitting in a classroom on opening day. I am finished with school. Here is what I learned in college:

1. College rewards cunning and perseverance far above intelligence or even common sense. The University of Florida, the state’s flagship university—the 161st best university in the world according to US News and World Report—is nevertheless full of profoundly average people. It may be rude to say, but many UF students are not smart. Not even about the subjects they are here to study. But they know how to operate within the system. They may skip every lecture, but they have purchased course notes and sample tests from the myriad shops across University Avenue that, in effect, sell grades. They have learned that most professors, if harassed enough, will raise a grade a letter or two just to shut a student up. College students use social media and other internet resources to avoid taking classes that may require actual work. And if it seems like a certain teacher’s class will be difficult, students drop it on the first day. One needn’t be smart to go to college.
2. Graduate school is nothing like college. Graduate school requires an almost impossible amount of work. That is, if one were to devote the time necessary to do graduate school well, he or she would have no time for any other activity. Therefore, few people in graduate school give it their complete attention. One learns that a balance must be maintained between scholarship and sanity. It isn’t hard to spot the students who have gone too far in the one direction: they look exhausted and have not shaved in weeks. You do not see the students who have gone too far in the other direction: they wash out. But I learned that graduate school professors do not want you to fail. That looks bad for everybody. Assuming you are not in a program with a terminal master’s degree like library science or creative writing, most professors will assume you have lofty academic ambitions that would be ended by a D or F, so you’d almost have to work at it to totally fail. I took a class once in grad school that, in hindsight I was entirely unqualified to take. It was the kind of class where I sat each week for three hours straight without speaking because I honestly had no idea what my classmates were talking about; speaking would have revealed my ignorance. I submitted a major paper that visibly disappointed my teacher. I was sure I wouldn’t pass the course. But I dug in and wrote a twenty-five page final paper I hoped would redeem me, and in the end I earned a B+. Though I was glad to get it, I almost felt dirty, since my classmates who got As knew what they were doing and I undoubtedly did not. But in graduate school, one learns that there is a tremendous difference between the amount of effort required to earn an A, and the amount of effort required to earn a B+. It is shocking, really, and I have a great deal of respect for my classmates who earned As. It means that they spent all their time reading and writing, and none of it with their families or friends. Graduate school professors assume you do not have a job or a social life outside of school. And many, if not most, of the very successful graduate students do not. They work as assistants to professors, and they socialize with other grad students (if they socialize at all). Unlike undergrads who are not especially smart, graduate students are smarter than you. You may have been the brightest kid in your high school class, and you may have been the only one who didn’t make your undergraduate professors shake their heads in disgust, but there are at least five people in your graduate seminars who know way more about the subject at hand than you do. And probably about a lot of other things. I was consistently amazed at the way some of my grad school classmates could be talking about deep, complex, and even highly-specialized topics one minute, and the next be talking, with authority, about baseball or movies. I was in a seminar last spring, and one of my classmates noticed a CD I had with me of art songs by Georges Auric. “Ah, Les Six!” said my classmate. This was a guy who could talk to you for hours about Jeremy Bentham, Michel Foucault, the history of prisons, the Toronto Blue Jays, and Benji movies. His classical music knowledge may have ended there, but given his other strengths, I was impressed.
3. Contrary to popular belief, colleges are not hotbeds of hippies and communists, and most professors are not pushing a political agenda. None of my undergraduate teachers ever said anything in class that could have been identified as partisan, and in graduate school I had only one professor who was identifiably leftist, though she never made it a thing. I never heard anyone promote Lenin or Mao, and all discussions of Marx—which, as you might expect, are necessary in any broad discussion of history—concentrated on Marx’s placement of economics at the center of historical questions. I am a perceptive person when it comes to recognizing people’s agendas, and I can say flatly that I was never indoctrinated.
4. College may make you irrationally loyal to your school. I cannot understand how it happened to me, but it did. Five years ago I didn’t have any strong feelings about the University of Florida one way or another, but now I get a little emotional when I hear “We Are the Boys from Old Florida”. And now, for some reason, when I see somebody wearing a Florida State hat, or an Alabama t-shirt, I think to myself, “go to hell!” And I sense that this will not change. Where ever I may be fifty years from now, I will still cheer for the University of Florida. And I am not alone. When I was on top of Stone Mountain in Georgia last year, more than one person who noticed my Florida hat approached me and said, “Go, Gators!” I got high-fives from strangers.
5. Knowing now how much work and stress is involved in getting an advanced college degree, not to mention how much it cost me, I am very glad I do not have to do it again.

So, good luck all you baby-faced freshmen attending your first college class today. I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.

Filed under: Musings, School on August 22nd, 2012 | 2 Comments »

For many reasons, college baseball gets little of the respect given to professional baseball, and none of the respect given to college football. Many people, even in this sports-loving college town, do not know or care that the University of Florida has a baseball team. A good baseball team.  For years, however, and for reasons I have previously stated, I have been a great fan of Gator baseball. Nevertheless, for all the love I feel for my school’s baseball team; for all the hours I have spent in the cold February darkness and blistering June sun watching them play; for all the money I have spent at McKethan Stadium’s expensive concession stand, my passion for UF baseball is dwarfed by the devotion to it shown by my friend Anthony. Seldom missing any home game, risking frostbite or sunburn, he fastidiously keeps score on his own clipboard, snapping countless photos throughout the game. He knows all the players by number and name, and keeps tabs on the state of the conference. He will “stand up and sing and sway” to “We Are the Boys from Old Florida”. He will stay until the sixteenth inning if he has to. He is, by my estimation, the very embodiment of sports fandom.

Last February, for his birthday, I gave him a Florida baseball cap – white with a blue brim and a large italic “F” on the front, and one of two designs the Gators wear on field. While mine looks filthy, he kept his neat and clean. And when he wore it to a weekend game a month or so ago, he managed to get it signed by nearly every Florida player, including most of the nine just drafted into the majors. He sent me a picture of it while I was out of town, and, rather than feeling jealousy, as I might if it had been anybody else, I felt genuine joy for him. He deserved that.

All of this is to say that my friend Anthony can do a much better job describing the frustration and disappointment I feel about the lamentable—embarrassing, even—conclusion to the Gators’ 2012 baseball season. Read this post at his blog, Multi-Purpose Stadium.

I’d be tempted to say, “next year”, but it ain’t going to be next year.

Filed under: Friends, School, Sports on June 20th, 2012 | No Comments »

I am working diligently to complete my non-thesis project, so writing for pleasure has had to take a back seat to writing for displeasure. But a few things merit mention.

First,spring is here officially, and so is Daylight Saving Time, which I love. I’ve been going in to work at half past five in the morning this week, and yesterday I was in class until after six o’clock at night. Still, though I had dinner out last night, I still made it home before dark. That makes me happy. The azaleas are just fading, but the jasmine is getting ready.

What also makes me happy is that we had the warmest winter I can ever remember. It was genuinely cold only a handful of days this year, and we barely ran the heater at home. Our electric bills were lower than ever.

We are in a Golden Age of University of Florida baseball. Last night was their first loss in something like nineteen games, and UF is the number one team in the country right now. But, sadly, it won’t last. Many of the team’s best players are seniors, or juniors who will be tempted to go pro. Next year’s team will look a lot different. Meanwhile, I have been doing my best to get to the ballpark for every game, but school work has made me miss a couple now.

I am looking forward to putting this writing project behind me so I can get back to the things I really care about.

Filed under: Current Events, Meteorology, School, Sports on March 23rd, 2012 | No Comments »

When you are in graduate school, you learn to appreciate the little things. Since the classes are in three-hour blocks, by halftime everyone is fading. But today, when I went to drop off a form in the graduate assistant’s office, I discovered an enormous bowl of Halloween candy, and I am talking about the good stuff: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Kit-Kat, Twix, those malted milk balls, and so on. When I got back to the seminar room with my booty, everyone asked where it came from. When I told them, a convoy was quickly dispatched, and soon enough the conference table was littered with wrappers as my classmate stuffed themselves with sweet, sweet candy. It looked like an eight-year-old’s bedroom floor on Halloween night.

Filed under: School on November 2nd, 2011 | No Comments »