I’ve talked about some of my college professors when I was attending, Huston-Tillotson College in the 1970s. It’s an HBCU in Austin, Texas. But I haven’t talked about my teachers elsewhere. That just occurred to me in the last few days. I had some exciting teachers at Iowa State University in Ames in the early 1980s. Three of them come to mind. I’ll refer to them as Dr. X; Dr. Y; and Dr. Z. I don’t have any long stories about them; just a few short anecdotes that struck me as interesting or slightly odd.
Dr. X was my microbiology professor. He was very intelligent. I remember our class was in the lab one day and I asked him if the colonies growing on my agar plate were encapsulated microorganisms or not. He pointed at the glistening puddle in my plate and just said, a bit impatiently, “That’s capsule!” I remember being a little embarrassed, but all he was doing was demonstrating that capsule through a microscope looks different when you view it with the naked eye. One day, during a class lecture, he shared with all of us that he’d been having some personal challenges. He said that his divorce had just been finalized and announced dramatically, “I am now available for dates.” I couldn’t tell whether he was just kidding or making a pass at the female members of the class. It was a little awkward, but we got past it.
Dr. Y was one of my chemistry professors. He lectured while writing on a blackboard with a piece of chalk. I realize this is now an ancient rite in the modern age of PowerPoint, which didn’t really get up to speed until after 1987. He highlighted major points and separated them by drawing a line between them. His fingers were always caked with chalk dust. There was no smoking in any of the lecture halls. However, one day after the end of lecture, a student approached him and told him he was joining the military. Dr. Y evidently knew the student and immediately struck up a conversation which looked and sounded like a father talking to a son. He hopped up on the table in front of the chalkboard, took out a cigarette and smoked it. He asked him, “When you leaving?” evidently referring to when the young man would be shipping out. I got the impression Dr. Y was an old military man himself.
I think the most interesting of the three professors was Dr. Z. He was also a chemistry professor, and early in his career. He wore his hair long, talked hip, and appealed to the young audience. He didn’t really use the chalkboard much. He had a flair for the dramatic. One day, he was talking about the periodic table in relation to electrons and their excitability the further they get away from the nucleus because they’re less tightly bound to it. Dr. Z used the table in the front of the chalkboard like a stage. First, he hopped up on the table and started jumping up and down a little, showing how electrons get excited. He grabbed a few chairs and put one of them on the table. He set a chair on the table and climbed on the chair. He then did a little jitterbugging on the chair, and waved his arms about, exclaiming “I’m an electron and I’m getting excited!” He managed to set another chair on top of the first chair and gingerly clambered upon it. He was a little slower about standing up, and the tower jiggled a bit—which made him pause. For a split second, I thought he was going to take a tumble and smack the nucleus. But he hung in there, slowly rose to a stand and waving his arms, proclaimed “I’m a really excited electron now,” or something like that. The class collectively held its breath. Dr. Z was a very excited electron—and managed to safely return to a lower energy state without breaking a leg.
Students remember teachers like these.
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