After I had been accepted to graduate school it became necessary for me to visit the campus and apply for an assistantship. This meant that I would pay for graduate school by accepting to work 20 hours a week at the campus radio station as Station Manager. It was a sort of vicious cycle but it was something that made sense: I wanted to keep my hand in radio and there was a station in search of a sucker...er, station manager (right).
It was during the previous spring semester that I first visited the campus to meet with the graduate school coordinator. Perhaps that encounter should have tipped me off about this wild idea of mine. The man I was introduced to was Dr. Oliver F. Goliard, Ph.D. Yeah, that’s how we were introduced, too. He seemed like a nice guy, albeit one who might have been in the throes of academia for a bit too long. Or, as one of my fellow graduate students reflected later, he had “his head up his ass” too long. True, Goliard had been at the school for many years, and was the first faculty advisor at that radio station, a position I was to believe he had only relinquished in recent years. Of course first impressions said otherwise at the time and I left campus feeling confident that I would return that fall to not only begin work on an MA but have a job lined-up for the foreseeable future.
Dr. Goliard was, to put it bluntly, strange...strange looking and strange acting. He looked waxy. He didn’t have a hard, chiseled face but a loose, floppy one; the skin seemed to ripple each and every time he smiled, which we in class soon learned was not often. Topics that usually made him smile were his education, his career, and his ability to come up with long drawn-out responses to questions he alone knew the answers to. In short – the guy liked to talk. He also liked taking off his glasses and striking studious poses when confronted with questions, though he usually deflected these inquiries back to the students. I suppose this was a teaching method.
His mannerisms were also legendary, or so claimed some of the graduating undergrads. I eventually took to calling him the “Artful Dodger” because of his wildly successful ability to dodge questions and interactions. One of my earliest memories was shortly after the start of the fall semester and I happened by his office, he inside with the door open. “Good morning, Dr. Goliard,” I said, walking by on my way elsewhere. He hollered out to come back – “What? Who goes there?” – he had missed who it was. I walked back and again said, “good morning” and added a “how are you” out of courtesy. His brow wrinkled and he hissed in a short breath of air as if this was a major distraction from whatever the hell he had been doing. “Well, yes it is a good morning but I’m afraid I’m a bit busy right this moment and not able to sit and talk with you, Marty. If you want to come back later and schedule something then....”
After a few interchanges like this you can imagine how hard it would be when you were required to talk with the guy.
At the time I didn’t know...and it’s a theory I never got back to exploring later...if this attitude was something that was to be expected in all graduate schools or if this was a persona he had adapted to give him that superior-like quality over his peers. Was this talking down an intentional quirk of professors to determine how tough first-year students were, or had the few of us in Goliard’s class found a rare specimen of academicus pompous? Was it his job to act like this or was he simply doing what came naturally? Yes, some of the other graduate professors were a bit aloof, too, but they could at least be approached and were known to crack a joke or two now and then. You know, in other words, appear human. Did Goliard feel superior because he had been there longer than everyone else?
I don’t know, but it got to be a sad state of affairs very quickly.
There were probably other sad professors out there and I found it droll that R.E.M. released an album that same year semester that could have almost been Goliard’s anthem.
Or maybe my anthem...because I was starting to hate where I wound up, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sad Professor
( Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)
R.E.M.
From the album Up
1998
If we're talking about love
Then I have to tell you
Dear readers, I'm not sure where I'm headed.
I've gotten lost before.
I've woke up stone drunk
Face down in the floor.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
This may be a lit invention
Professors muddled in their intent
To try to rope in followers
To float their malcontent.
As for this reader,
I'm already spent.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
Dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
Long silence presents the tragedies
Of love. Not the age. Get afraid.
The surface hazy with attendant thoughts.
A lazy eye metaphor on the rock.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
I hate where I wound up.
