Professor Gutsy.
I had this professor back in college. She was this short woman, well … my height, and rather petite. She wore hip clothes and drank lots of tea. She was by far the coolest professor I have had up to date. She was rebellious and free-spirited, shaved her head … just because she could. She didn’t like to follow the guidelines that society laid out for us You guessed it… she was a philosophy professor, for the sake of privacy we will call her Professor Gutsy.
What I found most interesting about Professor Gutsy was that she loved documentaries and reading, now I am not talking about reading fictional stories, although I am sure she enjoyed that too, I mean reading. She would become enveloped in philosophical writings, historical texts, elements of non-fiction, that at the time my college brain could not wrap around. I was aspiring to be her. I thought the fact that she was into all of this was “so cool”. I tried. I tried to watch documentaries with actual interest, and read complex texts, with philosophical and historical thought, and I just couldn’t. I could read the course packs that she gave us, and answer the questions that needed to be answered, but on my own free time, I couldn’t hold interest. Around the same time, I had purchased the Sherlock Holmes series. I was so keen to start it, but again, it had the historical edge and language, that I just could not grapple with. I would miss parts of the text, not understand what I was reading and flip back because I had missed what had happened at the moment. I was aspiring to be like Professor Gutsy, to be young and interested in what makes the world go around, in a philosophical and sophisticated sense, but I couldn’t do it. I had given up on ever becoming a sophisticated intellectual. I was just going to get through my studies and start working my regular 9-5 adult job.
I got it wrong. By the time I had reached University my brain was starting to catch up to my aspirations. I am now a few years passed the undergraduate school and I am beginning to gain interest. I am studying moral philosophy to develop characters in my new novel and opening old history books from college times to have a better understanding of what truly took place.
Finally, I opened Sherlock Holmes for the first time in six years. I began to read. And this time I am reading without losing interest, I cam keeping up with the historical language and the references. I am watching documentaries about science, history and moral thought. I have turned into the giant weirdo that I always wanted to be. What I didn’t take into consideration when I was in college was that maybe I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to understand these ideas, thoughts, and theories because I was still figuring out who I was as a person, and my brain just would not let it enter its chambers.
I have become free-spirited and have grown so much as a person in the last two years. I am starting to approach life with curiosity and adventure, rather than structure and predictability. I am becoming my own Professor Gutsy, but I don’t think I would be here had it not been for the original.