SCHOOL DAZE (Part One)

Some of you have asked me to explain how W.S. and I landed in the middle of cow dung country where there’s definitely “no place like home.” After serving his required two years in the Army (ours), W.S. had been honorably discharged. He had applied and was accepted into two master’s degree programs. One was at Pennsylvania State University, and the other one was at one of the universities a few hours away from his little, air-polluted hometown in Indiana. Both schools had excellent programs and well-versed faculty.

“The choice was easy,” he explained. “My civilian clothes were at my folk’s house, so I picked the shorter drive.” Consequently, his whole professional future was decided by an odometer, and we ended up in farm country at a State University.

I knew that he had had several girlfriends before me, but their parents didn’t live around the block from his aunt and uncle, so I suspect that my marriage was pedometer related, but I was always afraid to ask.

The professors at State U. were an odd lot at best---brilliant but odd. I often wondered if they were that way because they lived in the middle of nowhere, or if they had chosen to live in the middle of nowhere because it suited their oddness. Webster defines “odd” as “differing markedly from the usual or ordinary,” and that’s what I mean when I say “odd.

In a classic article in social psychology, Bruno Bettelheim describes how some prisoners in World War II concentration camps took on the characteristics of their guards. The graduate program at State U. wasn’t exactly a camp experience, but the one professor whom all of the students admired and emulated was Professor Liebling. Noted for his academic research and wealthy from his consulting practice, Professor Liebling was the dynamic leader with a lack of human relations skills whom all of his students wanted to become.

It was easy to pick out Liebling students because inevitably they would adopt his stylistic posture, his manner of speech, his homilies and his gait. But the tip-off was the “Liebling belt.” There was nothing particularly notable about that belt—it was merely a black pebble-grain, leather belt with an ordinary half-moon silver buckle. However, within weeks of entry into the graduate program, the identical “Liebling belt” encircled the waist of every male student in his classes.

Liebling was “The” professor---the one whose classes were a “must take!” His expertise was in training, and among other things, he taught his students how to make slick presentations targeting presidents of corporations.  When W.S. came home from class wearing his “Liebling belt” I knew that he was going to learn to hold up his end---as well as his pants.

Unlike Socrates, Liebling never pretended to be ignorant of his subject matter, and he was a masterful teacher. So, with Socratic irony, he was sentenced by the powers to be---not to death--- but to Deanship. That made drinking hemlock an attractive alternative.

Esther Blumenfeld (To be continued---)

CROSSING WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, Blumenfeld c. 2006