i suppose I have been thinking about this since the semester started and I am back to work.but beyondtheveil's classic book post got me to thinking about works i've read as well, which lead to thinking about classes i took while in college.
the class that i took that stands out in my memory over any other class through my years in college and all my years in grad school is a class that i took my junior year of working towards my bachelor of arts in english.
it was a class on the vietnam war in literature and film. i was drawn into the class, enthralled by the reading, and intrigued by the progressions of how films depicted that era of our history. it helped that the professor teaching the class was just great as well, but it was the subject of the class, the passion of the discussions, and the reading that still stick with me.
i still have all the books from that class. i'll pick them up and re-read them occassionally.
we read, the quiet american by graham greene and watched the original movie (not the remake that was recently done).
we read norman mailer's why are we in vietnam? and watched the green berets with john wayne.
we read going after cacciato and meditations in green both by tim o'brien. and then we watched coming home with jane fonda and john voight
finally, we read dispatches by michael herr and ron kovic's born on the fourth of july. several years later, i saw the film version of born on the fourth of july with tom cruise. i hated that movie and him in that role after reading the book, but that's another issue.
there was just something about that class that struck a cord in me, and it's one of the classes i remember most vividly. i can't articulate what specifically it was that made the class so great; yes, the teacher was great, the material and subject were interesting, but it was so much more than that, something intangible that i keep being drawn back to when i think of college.
so, what about you? do you have a favorite class from college that sticks with you more than any others.
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Zayda posted on Aug 23, 2007
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beyondtheveil said on Aug 23, 2007....
zayda- In my second semester freshman English, the professor chose a book I mentioned having read which is The Odyssey. For numerous sessions he took us step by step explaining the adventures and their symbolism. I was amazed at how much I had totally missed from the first reading. He continued teaching in that manner throughout the semester.
Reading and understanding good books is an art many of us have to be taught and this was my introduction to that teaching. After that class, which I enjoyed immensely, I never read a book the same way as before.
To this day, decades later, he is still in my thoughts.
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the_infernal_optimist said on Aug 24, 2007....
Well, two of my recent posts prove that I recall my astronomy course strongly - it was so much fun because the professor was always at 110%, you know? He was always "on" and the class never felt contrived - in fact, we frequently dragged it off-topic (or so we thought) only to discover a mini-lesson in every corner! Many students wrote him off as eccentric at first and then came to love the same qualities that contributed to that impression.
(I had a LOT of memorable classes/professors, but I'll spare you all save one more)
The honors history course I took freshman year stuck with me as well (biographies in European history - I forget the course name, but it was [Something], Lunatics, and Dreamers. Dr. D. was the hardest professor I've ever encountered - but one of the most personally intriguing. He was extremely formal and polite, but he kept a small Louisville Slugger on the podium. He sounded both Southern and British (I queried him on that once, turns out that he studied at Oxford).
Although there was an absolute avalanche of information to absorb in the course, I never once saw him with notes or books. He just talked about the people as if he had known them personally. I was thoroughly impressed (and went through several notebooks trying to keep up)! His testing was blue book open-ended "Pick one of these three to answer" - and there were only three tests the entire semester. No quizzes, nothing else - just those horrendously stressful one-question essays!
I think he forced all of us (all six students! talk about awesome class size - I bet he had to fight to keep that course open, though I'd knock the door down to sit in his classroom again) to grow intellectually that semester, to examine learning itself in a way that perhaps we hadn't before. The long-dead historical figures came to life as we sat around him in the grass on a sunny day, pondering what must have gone through the mind of the Mad King of Bavaria at this or that point in time.
May I go back and become a perpetual college student, and have all my professors be like that? :) I truly adored my time at school, as you can tell!
~Infernal
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the_infernal_optimist said on Aug 24, 2007....
Oh, we did have one 20+-page paper to write. That was actually a ton of fun, given the tone Dr. D. set for our work. I still re-read mine from time to time.
~Infernal
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lfbno7 said on Aug 24, 2007....
My favorite college class was play directing. I took two of them, regular and advanced. In both of them I got to direct a one act play, and the plays came out so terrific because we worked so long on rehearsals.
The two plays I directed were The Tiger (made into a movie called The Tiger Makes Out) about an abduction that turns into a love affair, and Black And Silver, about a young couple being woken up by their brand new baby constantly. They're both very cute.
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ladyscarlet said on Aug 24, 2007....
Zayda, here are my favourites...!
I continued with Biology all seven years of high school - mainly because my Biology teacher was so great. He used to jump about the classroom (in a non-intimidating way) and he taught us exactly what we needed to know without going off on a waffly tangent. He had such a tangible love of and enthusiasm for his subject it was infectious. We used to laugh at him all the time, drawing something anatomical on the board and saying "now girls, look at my vagina. It's better than Mrs Bagnall's I think." (she was our other Biology teacher). I always remember him fondly, and I also remember what I learned!
At Uni I took two classes with the same lecturer. One was called 'Borderlands' and the other 'Coming of Age in America'. We studied Chuck Palaniuk, Cormac McCarthy, Thelma & Louise, Eminem, and Boys don't Cry in Borderlands and talked about the unmarked borders in life, love, sexuality, morality etc etc. I learned so much - not just from the texts and movies but from the debate of these ideas with other students. Every lesson we had to challenge our ideas of 'normality' and learn to accept what was until then the (scary) 'other' in life (i.e. someone different). In Coming of Age we studied Catcher in the Rye, Vernon God Little, Donnie Darko, This Boy's Life, The Virgin Suicides etc. We analysed these characters as we had never dared to analyse ourselves, and discovered so much about our own experiences as we did.
I'll never forget the lesson we spent debating Holden Caulfield, and his worries about the ducks in Central Park. When we came to an understanding of his inner fear and tried to discuss the times we'd felt this... the whole class seemed to transcend the usual study group and acknowledge a common humanity. My best friend now dates a guy who was in that group with me, and he agrees we seemed to share something. That might sound a bit crazy, but those two classes reminded me why I had studied literature in the first place.
Ooh I just got all riled up again just thinking about it ;)
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rightwingwizard said on Aug 24, 2007....
It is difficult for me to single out a single class as my favorite or most memorable. One might imagine that I would select something in the history or anthropology areas as I do truly enjoy the study of history/ Also some of my best hours were spent there.Also, one might think I would choose a liturature class as I have always been an avid reader.But no, I do believe that if I must choose it would have to be my sixth, seventh and eigth semesters of greek. These three semesters were devoted entirely to the translation of new testament scripture and some of the greek classics using only our aquired understanding of the language. We could not refer to any other translation or discussions of other translaters work. We had done that at some length already. It was time for us to use our own knowledge of the language, using only the greek text and some rather obscure discussions on word usage and difficulties translating some concepts into english which has no clear way of expressing some of the concepts and themes revealed in the origional language.My prof was amazing in both his depth of knowledge and his enthusiasm for the work. There were only a handful of students in the class we were often refered to in rather a derogatory manner. Most of us had also taken several semesters of hebrew and aramaic. We would be called such things as masters of useless knowledge, lovers of dead languages and intellectual snobs to mention a few of the least offensive invectives. Oh yeah, though they were meant as insults, we rather enjoyed them nontheless.rww -
silverwhisper said on Aug 24, 2007....
like rww, i'm having difficulty picking one...but despite my having been a lit major, perhaps the single class that i'd consider my favorite was a drawing class i took.
i've mentioned before once or twice that i've chosen to focus on writing rather than drawing--my talent with art is more modest than w/ words. but there's something so liberating about a blank page that you can fill with what you see. that class was the first and only time i was able to work with a model.
the instructor insisted that we work with colored charcoals (not the technical name; i've forgotten the proper name) and a model walked into the room. she was wearing a robe. the class was immediately quiet and she found a pose that would be comfortable for the next 45 mins.
i remember being frustrated by the fact that the colors i was using were something blue and something red-ish, but i continued on anyway. she had a powerful bone structure and that was something i really wanted to capture.
once everyone was done, she walked around the desks to see what everyone had done and i was really pleased that she said that i had talent.
i wonder whatever happened to that enormous sketch pad i used.
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Mamie said on Aug 24, 2007....
hi Zayda!I have two favorite college class memories that I want to share...the first class was called "The Art of the Film" and I took it with a bunch of friends because we figured it would be an easy A...just watching films, right? Wrong! We learned so very much about film making, etc. but the best lesson of all came from the very first class. We were asked to watch a short film. We did. Then the prof asked...what was the house number? What kind of dog was it? Name of the store? Color of the house next door?Of course we had guesses but no real answers...ah, the art of the film...opened my eyes to life itself.The second profound experience came by choosing Psych classes with a Dr. Aberman...in this series of courses, I realized many things about RL...it helped to explain some mysteries about my childhood and the adults involved..and continued into my everyday life now as I find the right questions to ask...when just trying to get by.Great blog, thanks for jarring my memory of those two excellent profs!!Mamie -
ZsuzsiO said on Aug 24, 2007....
I don't separate classes, but remember good and bad teachers. I could tell you about my 7th grade teacher who used to be crazy so we loved learning with her,or my first year college English teacher in the USA, who graded my A+ paper extremely low due to punctuation mistakes, telling me, the worse speller ever, that spelling can ruin even the best works. I never became a good speller, but my English is was better than his Hebrew or Hungarian.There was Mr.T who beleved me so much, I could call him in the middle of the night and he'd be excited about it.My human anatomy teacher was so into the classes, we'e all happy to just sit there and taken in by her energy.... -
Eilan said on Aug 24, 2007....
I loved my two undergraduate Shakespeare classes--the grad class I took sucked sweaty donkey balls. The professor, who's now one of my best friends and a fellow book group member, was so enthusiastic about the material. She used to bring in videos of various productions/films, both mainstream and obscure, so we could look at different versions of the same scene and discuss how the actors and directors chose to interpret the material.
In one class, she had us choosing parts and reading aloud, and one guy refused to read a woman's part. Never mind that all of the parts would have been played by men back in Shakespeare's day!
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lioneljay said on Aug 24, 2007....
I enjoyed so many classes in college that it's hard to single out one for mention here. Still, the one that almost always comes to mind when I reflect on my college years would be the class I took in The Bloomsbury Group. It was given during our short term, an intense six week term that equalled a full semester. We read several major works by Virginia Woolf and others who formed a close-knit artistic community in England between the two world wars. What sticks with me is the passion with which the professor shared his understanding of the people and their work. Classes were all about three hours in length, held daily, and he rarely used notes even when he was quoting long passages from Woolf. That class was inspiring on many levels and it was probably the genesis of my interest in becoming a scholar. Of course, I took a detour from that path but that's another matter altogether. -
Eilan said on Aug 24, 2007....
LJ, I took a similar class my first semester of grad school. It was a Virginia Woolf seminar, but we became acquainted with other Bloomsberries as well. I found the group dynamic so interesting that I've done quite a bit of reading on my own in the years since.
I always found the relationship between Dora Carrington and Lytton Strachey to be fascinating. Fascinating, yet sad.
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lioneljay said on Aug 24, 2007....
Eilan, Lytton Strachey was my favorite non-writer in the group. There were so many fascinating little dynamics in this group, weren't there? Virginia and this group was my introduction to bi-sexuality and I distinctly remember feeling a sense of envy that they were able to live their lives with such intent and intensity. -
Bronx said on Aug 24, 2007....
Hi...Zayda. Mine was an Experimental Psychology class in my Sophomore year in college - an elective.
Nothing really too academic, except reading Pavlov and Skinner, in my recollections now - just a lone Engineering major, among traffic-stopping Sorority girls, and long lasting interactions!
ha-ha - those were the days of Summer.......
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rmuxagirl said on Aug 26, 2007....
There was one class I would love to take again, but mainly for the professors I had. I think the professors are what makes the class memorable. A great professor makes the class great.
I would always remember the classes I took with Professor Jim Vincent, which were Study of Language, Early English Literature and Seminar in Yeats and Joyce. Although we didn't have a ton of work we still learned a lot from Jim. He made a point to make the class fun and interesting for each person. One project was a travel tour in certain countries, mine was to follow the early Christians in Ireland because he knew I would have fun with it.
Another class I would always remember is Humanities with Professor Silbert. He made the material interesting and made us think about things outside our own desires.
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harriedpsychmajor said on Aug 26, 2007....
I enjoyed the vast majority of psychology classes I've taken, which is a good advantage since, just as my username suggests, I studied it. But my favorites in particular were Principles of Counseling and Abnormal Psychology. What gave these two courses an extra boost in my interest were the professors. The professors were wife and husband, respectively, with similar teaching methods and candid environments in their classrooms. I got a solid A in my counseling class, and an A- in abnormal. Remembering these courses makes me want to return to college and finish my degree even more now.
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