Well... no type on here, anyways :)
I had an appointment with my Literary Analysis professor today.
I was 20 minutes early for the appointment, so I sat outside the narrow hall of English department offices (only a few out of many, mind you), and played Jumbline (the lite version because it works just as well as the paid one... I don't mind advertisements every now and again).
Around 1:28, I entered the narrow hallway, red folder with story choices out, and turned to face her open door at the end of the little hall. She was sitting at her messy desk, tapping away on her white Mac desktop.
As I reached up to tap on the door, she turned around, so my tap wasn't completely unnecessary, but I could have waited just a half second more, and realized I didn't need to tap.
As I stepped in, she asked what she could do for me, and I told her my name, and that I had an appointment to talk with her about my story choice for my critical analysis research paper. She told me that she was just e-mailing me back (about something not relating to the research paper), and then she asked if I had any idea what sort of story I wanted to do. I told her I had a few picked out already, and pulled 4 stacks of stapled paper out of my red folder. I handed them to her, and she said "Oh, not Araby..." (apparently that story is over done) I chuckled, and said something along the lines of "that's one knocked out." She liked that I had picked Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
As she perused my stories choices, I perused her office.
It matched what I knew of her to the T: Disheveled and disorganized (well, she had a sort of faux-organization about her-her office did not, however).
There were 4 awkwardly placed bookshelves in the small 6x6 room. She had one next to the window in front and to the left of her, one adjacent to that on the left wall, and at the end of the second one, she had two shelves back-to-back cluttered with anything from novels, Japanese (anime?) comics, to National Geographic style book on the history of the Greeks.
As I watched, I would bring my eyes back to her lap where the stories rested to make sure that she wasn't staring at me... staring.
She then turned to her computer as she told me that the Christmas Tree Story would probably work best because it wasn't an excerpt like the other Dostoevsky one (and I'm assuming she doesn't like Tolstoy's peasant stories too much because she mentioned something about them having to do a lot with spirituality and didn't really bring it up again... not sure about that one. I liked it, and she was correct).
As I looked around more, I noticed homemade wind chimes hanging on the window. They looked as though they were made by children (she is unmarried and has no children of her own, so I assumed they were given to her by her niece or nephew), she had two desks in her office. Both a cluttered mess. I kept having to fight the urge to go find a trash can and start filling it. Although none of it looked like actual "garbage", I'm sure much of it was unused and would like to see some sunshine... even if it was from the top of a trash pit.
In the corner next to me (and all over the floor and her desk) was huge stack of papers. Upon closer examination (my eyes narrowed in) I realized that the papers were actually hand written paragraphs -something I would be doing in her class in about 20 minutes- (mine would be joining that stack at the end of the semester, I had no doubt- what a sad thought... never being more than what you wrote on a piece of paper.. and thrown into a stack- did any of them make an impression on her?) That stack of papers reminded me of her and her lectures. When she spoke in her breathy manner (only when lecturing, I noticed), she always seemed as though, when giving an answer, she was going through a mental filing cabinet searching for the right stack of papers... ones she usually seemed as though she misplaced. Although, a filing cabinet would have been a welcome addition for that stack of old college papers that sat on the floor in a heaped up mess even Snow White and her friends couldn't brush under the rug.
Wha? There was an umbrella practically taking aim at my side that was positioned at an angle and leaning against my chair. I guess my body had adjusted it as a sort of appendage when I sat down because I hadn't really noticed it until I looked down and realized it was practically in my lap. Quite a forward little umbrella if I do say so myself.
There was a path basically cleared from the doorway, to her chair, and to the extra chair (the one I was now sitting in) she had, presumedly for people like me or if a friend/colleague came into her office for an extended conversation. Everywhere else there was paper and books.
I was still playing the "glance up every few seconds and make sure she was watching me" game, when he began to laugh. She was using the SELU online library and had typed in Dostoevsky's last name, and apparently what came up highly amused her.
"How do they spell his name? So many people spell it differently."
"Fyodor? Do they spell it like that?"
"I've usually seen it spelled with a 'y' at the end," I chimed in after about 3 minutes of continued tapping on the keyboard and laughing. she replied that she knew... but apparently she hadn't tried that one yet because she changed the end to a 'y' and something came up. She started scribbling on a note pad.
"Jimeny crickets..." she said is a bit of a disgusted tone. I don't think she liked Dostoevsky's name too much after our meeting.
She handed me the scribbled note, told me where I could find some of the books that pertained to Dostoevsky in the library, asked me if I understood the Dewey Decimal System, and then I thanked her, and she said she would see me in a few minutes.
Very interesting meeting. I think you can tell a lot about a professor by going into their office.
[In case you were curious as to which stories I brought to show her: Araby by James Joyce, The Christmas Tree and the Wedding by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alyosha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy, and another by Dostoevsky (actually a excerpt pulled from a book) entitled The Peasant Marey. We ended up going with The Christmas Tree and the Wedding.]
signed:
the Artful observer
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