First Day of Fall Semester

Despite the feeling of being overwhelmed, I really enjoyed today’s classes. RED 3012 focuses on helping students learn to read. The teacher is delightful. I wish she had been my teacher when I was a child. She even reads stories to us!

I was a little less sure of my evening class. The fact that it started at 11:00PM and was held in a room that should have been a storage closet didn’t make me any surer of myself or the class. This class is called Self-Reflective Practices. I assumed that our professor was one degree short of a fruit loop. Dr. Sidrax appears to be nearly 800 years old. He wears a suit, but over it he dons a long, dark brown cape. He looks like he’s trying to pass as a wizard at an anime convention or something. But in spite of his appearance, I soon found him to be relatively sane… and surprisingly helpful.

I couldn’t help but nod a bit as the doctor’s eloquent, deep voice massaged my ears, my inners. I’d been up since 5:00 AM, and my bedtime and long since passed. As if from an episode of the Twilight Zone, I looked up from one of these nods to find myself staring directly into the professor’s eyes. Fortunately, he was smiling. After enjoying having scared me into a small fit of hysteria, he stood and addressed the entire class. “Everyone is sleepy, yes?” About 31 other heads nodded in response. “I think this will happen. I ask, ‘Why have class when peoples is going to be sleepy?’ I no get answer. But! I have gift for you. Something help you stay awake…night time AND day.” Reaching into the folds of his robe, he pulled a small flask and held it up for everyone to see. I am not ABOUT to start drinking to stay awake in class, old man, I thought to myself. As if he’d heard my thoughts, he snapped his head around to face me. “This no is…eh…bubble bubble. Is root juice.” He laid the flask on my desk and removed the top. A pungent, licorice-like smell arose from the bottle. He then reached into his robe again, this time pulling out a small box of cookies. Opening the box, he presented the cookies to me. “You take.” I took one. But before I could place it into my mouth, he dropped a single drip from his flask onto the surface. I looked at it with disgust. He smiled at me. “Go ahead. You eat.” I took a bite. Then another. Soon, all I had left to show for my cookie was a small collection of crumbs. “Good,” he told me, then moved on to the next student.

In short, our professor is sweet yet crazy, he has poisoned us, and our first assignment is to go out and find a mirror. It has to be a mirror we find. We cannot buy it. And it cannot be a mirror that we already own. Go figure.