This past Wednesday I taught my first American history class to undergraduates at Beihang. I knew that after lunch most of them would be quite tired. This was also aided by the fact that the classroom was sweltering and the students are English majors, not history. It was the first lesson of my first time teaching this course, so I was a little nervous. As I mentioned in another post, when I am nervous I tend to babble (as well as stutter). While teaching, I started to listen to myself and I noticed that I said “ok” and “right” frequently. It was so frequent that if my students had smuggled alcohol into the classroom for a drinking game based on my usage of these two words, they would all have died from alcohol poisoning half way through.
The reason I bring this up is that I recall a time when I too was a student, a sophomore in college just as my students are today. The class was music appreciation, taught by Prof. Barzenick. While this class was about the appreciation of music, my feelings were anything but. My tastes at the time were limited to country and 70’s rock. Through the lens of maturity, I must admit that I was pretty one dimensional when it came to music. Some may still believe this is true. Despite my past disinterest, I actually learned quite a bit from that class. For example, I was recently able to impress a friend or two with the knowledge that Monteverdi produced perhaps the earliest opera. This despite the fact that I cannot tell Monteverdi from Mozart if my life depended on it.
What I remember most about his class, however, is the reason for this post. He used the phrase “you get the idea” after just about everything he said. Bored from tinkling pianos and fat sopranos, I started to doodle a comic book based on this concept, titled Death by Barzenick. In it, Prof. Barzenick died in myriad ways, stating after each time “you get the idea.” I tortured this poor man in ink for an entire semester, although he never knew of it. I had no animosity toward him, personally or professionally, but it was what my somewhat morbid tastes at the time swayed toward. At the time, I thought it vastly amusing. Yet now, listening to myself teach, I was struck by the thought, “I am Barzenick!” I initially panicked at that and resolved right then to not use those two words the rest of the class. This resolution lasted about two or three minutes. Since I seem unable to discipline myself, I should get a t-shirt made, even if no one understands the reference.
