Once upon a time, I took Intro to Philosophy with my trusty friend Anna Luther (she was Luther then, back off!). I was reminded of several things about this class when, in a staff meeting here the other day, a man had a fly land on his upper-lip and begin moving around the landscape of his scruffy face while he remained unfazed by the insect who was becoming intimately acquainted with him. When this happened I couldn’t think of anything else except for the fly on his face and I even had to hold back laughter in a serious situation, which lets be honest, is always a bad lot.
Our Philosophy Professor, David Vander Laan, also possessed this same ability to regularly have flies land on his face and continue unflinchingly to teach us about the limits of reason or the ontological argument for…blah blah, or rather, meep meep, nar nar, as Anna prefers.
After my co-worker endured the fly on his face, my thoughts went elsewhere to early on in my freshman year as an 18-year-old trying to make it through DVL’s class. Let me give you some context for why this class holds so many memories for me. It was the only class at Westmont I would have considered myself to truly fail academically in. I got a C, but I’m not referring to the grade, I’m referring to the level of energy I put forth in the class, my confidence level in the material and my overall proficiency in the ideas I was learning about. I would like to take this moment to place blame for my failure in this class not on the extensive note-passing of Anna and myself, nor on my incompetence to test well in an oral exam. I would like to blame DVL for always letting flies roam freely on his face during lectures. Added to this strange quality of the man was the stare down. If you had DVL, you certainly remember that he would stare at people when he taught and hold his gaze for an unnatural and unbearable amount of time. Couple the gaze with the flies and you must admit there was nothing else for a couple of 18-year-old girls to do but initiate and uphold the best series of notes written between two friends in the history of note passing.
Let us recollect. There was Noel Peepgrass, who Anna kind of liked and he sat near us on most MondayWednesdayFridays. Now Noel went and started dating someone else, so naturally we needed to make up Garbage Pail Kid names for this girl and also any other person who crossed us in one way or another. Then, there was also the letting each other know what to expect for the chapel speaker of the day. This would be something like, “Anna, your mom is speaking in chapel today on her life of recovering from working the streets to sustain you as a small child. It should be touching, but possibly a difficult stroll down memory lane as you might recall some bad memories of your mommy taking you to work”.
To me, this story of my failure as a student of Philosophy is a strong argument for the value of development as a whole person. I did not retain or probably ever gain the intellectual concepts someone was paying a great amount for me to get. But, I did develop socially and emotionally as I grew in my ability to pass notes that made my old, worn out binders well worth saving. And if there is a going away party for Shane and Anna’s oldest child when he or she takes off for college someday I will bring that binder from Intro to Philosophy in hopes of imparting some unconventional wisdom to the college-bound.
4 comments:
Wow. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...right? I too have MANY vivid and hilarious memories from this class. Just last week I shared the story about bombing the one-on-one oral exam that he administered as a final, and how you had patiently waited outside his office only to see me burst into tears when I exited, sending you, petrified, into the lion's den for yourself. ROUGH. Also, can we remember that study session at Sushi Teri with all those upper classmen? SO RANDOM. Do you know that DVL married Kate Russel, who is loosely in a social circle that I run in, so I have encountered him numerous times in adult social situations? I avoid eye contact at all costs.
Haha!! This post is amazing. I had DVL the following year. Nothing changed. Was stared down so many times and could not believe his ability to allow flies to crawl all over him!! The oral tests with him were killer. I got a 45% on my first test and begged for written tests after that!! Anna I feel for your pain in having to run into him in social settings. I was lost in so many ways in that mans class.
oh my gosh! Other people were just as afraid of his oral tests as I was?!?! I thought I was the only one bombing them! I really wish all three of us were better friends freshman year...I feel like I was maybe in your class?
My awkward DVL situation: opening my tent on the first night of Potters Clay and looking straight at him, in his tent, fresh and puffy eyed.
Wow! That man has been letting flies crawl on his face for far too long. I had DVL Spring of my Soph. year at the Mont and was consistently amazed by his ability to unflinchingly stare students down while flies bopped around his eyes.
Unfortunately I had him at 8AM Mon, - Wed - Fri. which were also the same days I worked out at 6AM... DVL maintained the same workout schedule. I found it even harder to keep a straight face during his stare-downs when I remembered that just minutes before he was grunting on the leg press.
Thanks for jogging the memories!
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