The Open Computer

I did not appreciate the professor immediately.

At first, I noticed the visible things: the hair, the beard, the bicycle in his office, the old car, the sense that he did not quite match the formal picture of a professor I had built in my head. He seemed relaxed and individual, which I liked from a distance.

Then I failed courses.

Student judgment becomes remarkably efficient at that point. If you pass, the professor is reasonable. If you fail, you begin discovering serious problems in educational philosophy.

My opinion changed again in my final year when I took his computer graphics course. His jokes were good, the exam questions had personality, and he seemed close enough to students that asking for help did not feel like entering an administrative process.

One registration-day incident stayed with me. I asked whether I could handle a friend’s registration and have it approved later. He misunderstood me in the most generous possible direction and immediately offered to do the registration there on his own computer.

I explained that I had only meant to ask for approval afterward.

He replied that I would probably not find an empty computer in the lab and told me to do it there anyway.

The whole event may have taken only a few minutes. He probably forgot it soon after. I did not.

By then, I had begun to understand that students remember professors through two different records. One contains lectures, grades, exams, and courses. The other contains smaller evidence: whether the door felt open, whether a question could be asked without embarrassment, whether authority needed distance in order to feel real.

I had noticed the bicycle before I noticed the teacher.

That took longer.

Perhaps some lessons do.