In the old days, while I was a pre- medical undergraduate student, I went to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. After being admitted to the medical school, I moved on to the medical units in Memphis.
To get to Memphis there were several hoops through which one had to jump. Grades, MCAT scores, etc. were important. Not the least important was to get by RJ and her physics course of three quarters. There seemed to be no way to get to Memphis without decent grades in physics. I had a great high school physics teacher, so I didn't worry a lot. That is, I didn't worry a lot until I got the scoop on RJ's course.
This lady was an old maid, ugly as homemade sin, smoked like a chimney, and hated men, especially those men aspiring to become doctors. I might mention that in those days, a teacher smoking in class was acceptable. RJ had a penchant for reminding her classes of pre-med students that they weren't going to get to Memphis without getting by her. She likely would have been a good teacher if she had not had these hangups. Her students were in her class always. No one would have cut her class if they had been half dead.
Her quizzes were always unannounced and took on a bizzare turn. She would enter the room, write a question or questions on the board, and then light up a Lucky Strike. When she put it out, the time was up. Traumatic at best describes her knowledge assessment by this means. It so happened that I liked Knoxville so much more than West Tennessee that I went to school there in the summer time also for two years. The last year, my faculty adviser suggested that I take the first quarter of physics that summer. I signed up only to find that RJ was not teaching it. I figured one quarter down wouldn't hurt when I met RJ in the fall. It turned out that in the fall, she taught the first quarter physics, and the summer teacher followed on with our second quarter.
I cannot say that missing RJ was something that I regretted, but it turned out that was not to be anyway. The week before classes started that fall, RJ died! That's right, went toes up, cooled it, left for stiff city, etc. Well, that didn't matter to me, but I was told that both medical fraternities in Memphis left classes early and threw a big party. Somehow, I think that RJ would have liked that.
Third quarter physics is another blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment