The Professor
By Guest Blogger - Renzo Millones
Today in class, my Professor, and old dude, totally absent minded, was solving problems in the class using a retro projector. He always starts with solving them on a little piece of paper, and he talks to himself and you have to figure out what he’s trying to do…like omitting units when he operates and stuff.
Today I stormed him. Between lines I called him dirty and disorganized. I asked him, how would you qualify or correct an exam if it was written like that? And I pointed out his illegible writing. I was pissed, then he got pissed and defensive, and I noticed I had hurt his feelings; but his class, the way he writes it, gives you the impression that he has not prepared anything. He improvises and dictates for himself. So, he invited me to discuss all this with him later.
Later, I went to his office and I saw the state of matters for myself. A bachelor’s pad would be an organized catalog next to this guy’s room. He had piles of newspaper, from the ground up to my height, in towers. All the desk was covered in books and newspapers. I thought ‘Ok, he collects important articles’, but I saw sections of the Sun and the Metro….books everywhere just piled up, his office was a dumpster. Then I realized he wasn’t able to see or understand it. This guy lived in it. He is like this, his head works like this.
He is one of those geniuses that cant seem to get organized and I saw my future like that if I keep on being disorganized….a lonely clumsy teacher, with a beautiful brain with no order, a head totally submerged into chaos. That’s what is going to happen to me, if I don’t take care.
I just apologized as much as I could and started small talk about the books and the library blah blah.. trying to bring the heat down. I managed to do so. He said he would consider writing everything on a large piece of paper instead of scribbling in margins, etc.
And I felt like a piece of shit, behaving harshly with this kind character. It’s not that he’s being an asshole with us; he is just like that, has been all his life and probably will do so till he dies….will die buried in a pile of newspapers. He said “There’s some important stuff that I want to go through later, and then I never have the time to get to it again…”
When I returned home, and saw one of my shelves, with magazines - magazines that I said I was going to scan, digitalize and get rid of but never did. Then I realized that I was criticizing the things I don’t like about myself when I saw them reflected in someone else. So, I don’t really like me, and if I don’t want disorder in my life, I should get rid of it, and my surroundings will align itself to my thoughts.