First Impressions

I have now been to both of my classes for this semester, and the first thing that comes to mind to say is: oh wow. This will be a…well, an entertaining semester. I’m still deciding whether or not that’s a good thing….

Shakespeare first:
The prof is probably in his early to mid 60’s. He’s been teaching at TSU for 30 years. Shakespeare and Renaissance Lit is his thing. He went over all the non-Shakespeare plays we’re going to be reading and gave us a 5-10 minute synopsis of each. He was pretty funny in his descriptions. He didn’t tell us about any of the Shakespeare, but he did go through the list and ask who had already read what. Of the 13, I’ve read 8. There are 2 to 3 plays assigned every week. We have to read one and just skim the other(s). It’s our choice which one we read/skim. Each week, everyone has to give a 5 minute report over the play they read. I’m not too excited about that part. There are 13 people in the class; that means it's going to take over an hour to get through the reports, and one thing I learned last semester is that a professor can give a time limit for a report/presentation, but no one actually follows it. Everyone (except me) goes longer than they’re supposed to. I’m afraid we’ll be spending the entire class every week just going over reports. That just doesn’t sound interesting to me. I'd rather hear what the prof has to say.

Now for American Novels of the 20’s:
This prof is probably in his late 60’s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in his 70’s. I’d say he was in his 80’s, but he doesn’t look or act that old. He doesn’t use a computer if he can help it. Doesn’t do email. He gave us 5 handouts last night that he probably typed on a typewriter years ago. One was the syllabus, one was “Odds & Ends about the USA 1870-1900”, another on “USA in 1900”, “The Best-Selling Novels in America 1911-1920”, & “The Second American Renaissance”. After he did attendance (just attendance…he didn’t do anything to try to actually learn what name went with what face), he started talking. Around 8:00 we had to stop him to ask for a break. We came back from break, and he started talking again until 9:15. It was fascinating. He didn’t even look at any of the handouts, didn’t have any notes, but he was throwing out dates and names and events. He talked about things that happened in the early 1900’s as if he had actually been there. He talked about the authors we’re studying as though he knew them personally. He calls Fitzgerald “Fitz”. He told stories about the writers as though he had been there when it happened. His wife’s sister’s husband grew up with William Faulkner…used to go fishing with him, called him Bill. He has a cousin who has had at least 2 best-selling novels, but he wouldn’t say his cousin’s name. The entire last hour of the class, all I could think was, “This guy should be on Jeopardy. He knows about EVERYTHING.” The entire drive home, all I could think was: Oh. My. Gosh.

I think it's going to be a fun semester. I will definitely be doing a lot of reading.