Post by Cait Boyce

In case I haven’t made it abundantly clear, I had a bumpy transition into college. Responsibility has never been my best subject, which made my freshman year a pretty consistent struggle. I probably wouldn’t have ever pulled out of it had it not been for a few dynamite professors. I’d like to take a moment to highlight these dynamite professors.

My first really great professor was Dr. Hans Kellner. I took his Lit of the Western World class, but he’s the kind of professor who would be excellent in whatever he taught. He spoke in an eloquent and perfect dialect, almost like you’d hear on a pre-recorded answering machine, except emotion saturated each word that exited his mouth. I’ve always enjoyed classic literature, but Dr. Kellner brought it to a whole new level. I could absorb Dr. Kellner’s passion for the literature and it would completely change the way I read it. One night I was reading about the fall of Troy in Virgil’s Aeneid when it became so real to me I started crying. Yeah, I was sitting in my dorm’s study lounge with tears running down my face. It’s not my proudest moment. http://admissions.ncsu.edu/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/classroom11.jpg

I took a summer running class after my freshman year with Henry Kidd. He ran circles around the young and athletic 20-something-year-old marines in the class, even though he was at least three decades their senior. I, of course, was usually too far behind to even see it, but I would listen to him giving the guys a hard time for letting him beat them. He was something else. One day we were in the weight room when he told me to get on the bench press. I have never been on a bench press in my life, so this was something of a novelty for me. He told me to do ten reps, but as I struggled under the load of some relatively low weight, I told him I just couldn’t go on and he should help me put the bar back on the holding things. I was surprised when he told me that he wouldn’t, and I’d have to finish the last reps by myself or be crushed by the bar. (I am not the girl who knows how to take that sort of comment.) I did a couple more until my arms were shaking so badly I thought I really thought I was going to drop it on myself. I had actually reached the end of my strength. I had nothing more to give. It was my last rep. But he still wouldn’t help me out. I don’t think I knew what “trying as hard as you can” meant until that moment. I somehow got the bar back up and finished the last rep, and my arms didn’t stop shaking for hours. Even though that running class was “just a P.E. class,” it taught me more about hard work and dedication than any other class ever has. I finally realized that I had to work really, really hard to succeed. I recognize that I’m probably a little slow on the uptake about this idea.

This past semester, I took a religious studies class from Dr. Anna Bigelow. The class was Introduction to Islam, and it was far more interesting than I anticipated. The class was great, but might I say a few words about the professor? She was super cool. I know that might be a weird way to describe a doctor of religious studies, but seriously. She wore TOMS and rode her bike to campus. She never wore the same outfit twice. She would illustrate a point by showing clips from “The Daily Show.” She was a lot cooler than the students, which we didn’t really mind.

These are only a few of the extremely fabulous professors I’ve had here at NC State. If you ask any student who their favorite professor is, they can provide you with a lengthy list. NC State professors are the crème de la crème, and for those of you who are planning on joining us here at this fine institution of higher learning, prepare yourselves for greatness.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS