My parents visited two weeks ago. I found that they had an ulterior motive when I realized what, and how much, they brought with them. My bedroom at my parents' house had never been cleaned out, so quite a bit of junk had accumulated over the years. And really it was just a dumping ground while I was going to school. Now that I have my own house, my parents decided it was about time for me to assume possession of those bedroom items. At first I was despondent. I didn't want to deal with it all, not after having spent so much time working on my house---I had just finished making the storage room presentable, and I wasn't about to junk it up again.
This week I finally worked up the courage to go through it all. Much to my surprise I found that many remains from my UofI years were present. These consisted of many notebooks. Syllabi and papers that I had thought were long gone were also there. For a couple classes I think I had saved every shred of paper. For two classes I even had Notes and Quotes lecture notes that I had purchased in lieu of going to class. I probably should have gone to the history class, but the sociology class was a colossal waste of time, so that was money well spent.
These materials brought back a flood of memories. Probably due to the following 4 years years of higher education much of my time at UI was obscured, for lack of a better word. Some of the classes and teachers I barely remember. I did not remember the name of my professor for history 152---that was the class that I purchased the lecture notes for, so that isn't a huge surprise. My first Spanish class (actually second since I dropped the first) was taught by someone who I kinda remembered. She was not a native Spanish speaker, and she would actually use English from time to time. She didn't attack us with the Spanish language. I can't express how much better it is to to learn a language under relaxed conditions. Anyway, she is dead. I found her name on one of the class papers, and googled it. It returned an obituary. To be sure it was the same person, I looked her up on the UI alumni directory. Yep, deceased. She died in 2004, at the age of 37. Ugh. It's too bad because she seemed like a nice person, and there are far too few decent Spanish teachers around.
That revelation spurred me to look up other names. Several of my classes had lecture and discussion sections. I generally remember the professor, but sometimes my memory of the T.A. is very hazy. Two of my history T.A.s became professors. I could find no record of another T.A.--he was an ass, so it wouldn't surprise me if he never went on to do anything worthwhile.
I already mentioned one of my English teachers, Michael Berube, in a blog post from a long time ago. Another English class that I took my last semester at UI, (103-Intro to Fiction) was easily one of the best and most worthwhile classes. You would think that I would remember my teacher for that class. Well, I remember him, but I don't remember his name. Which brings me back to those notebooks. The more I rummaged through them, the more I realized that I had saved nearly every paper from every class I took at UI. I don't remember intentionally doing this--I think it was more a case of my being too lazy to go through everything at the end of the semester. Anyway, that teacher's name should be somewhere in this mess, right? Ummm, no. Argh!
