Readers and writers blog

The first entry I read on a weblog called A Gentleman’s C was the author, a self-described Angry Professor, complaining that a student didn’t seem to understand that her final exam couldn’t be rescheduled in order to give her a full day between each of her finals. Then I read more: This student, described as ‘nontraditional,’ receives the services of the school’s disability office, but the Angry Professor won’t budge on the exam date. Wow, I thought, this guy is going to get it in his comments section.

That was just the first wrong conclusion I drew.

First, some right conclusions: This blog, I realized after reading much more, goes beyond some professor’s rant about students and offers reflections on parenthood, ailments, neighbors, society, religion, life in general — much of it with humor — and, yes, death.

And it is extremely well-written. Which is why it’s the latest addition to our blogroll.

Now to the wrong stuff: The Angry Professor in no way subscribes to the ‘gentleman’s C’ — a guaranteed non-failing grade given to students of influential families at Ivy League schools like the one where I started college as a scholarship student (before I got drafted into the Army). Furthermore, AP’s readers were supportive in their comments, largely because it would be unfair not to reschedule exams for the other 119 students in the class. And lastly, the small generic headshot of the author in a floppy beret, when inspected more closely, shows not a man but a woman. Hmmm, now where have I seen that face . . . why yes, Sylvia Coleridge, the late actress who played a professor on the British TV series “The Tomorrow People.”

Now I was warming up to AP and her Angry Family — including her husband, Angry Baker, as well as Angry Kid, Crazy Mother, Angry Sister, Angry Little Dog, Angry Crazy Cat and so on.

Not to mention Angry Student, whom AP addresses in an entry Sept. 16, 2005:

Angry Student, my first ‘real’ Ph.D. student, . . . you were the best. You were the kind of student that every professor dreams of getting the opportunity to mentor. You actually thought about things. You had ideas. You didn’t need me to tell you what was interesting. You solved problems. You taught me.

Ahhh, AP does have a heart.

In an entry April 22, 2005, she discusses the daily visit to her faculty club by the elderly professors emeriti, particularly one who admits “having some difficulty with orientation” and then struggles with a university phone as he tries to make a call and then can’t hear the other end very well:

(After he finally) terminated the call, I watched him walk very slowly, with a gait suggesting Parkinson’s disease, across the room to sit next to a friend. His friend asked him about his research. To my great delight, he launched into a complicated monologue on theoretical physics. It was a miraculous transformation and a joy to watch.

In an entry Aug. 25, 2006, the professor discusses her father-in-law’s terminal illness and reflects on her own father’s death:

I lost my dear father over a decade ago, and so I have been through much of what the Angry Baker is soon to experience. It isn’t just my father’s gone-ness that hurts. I also had to watch my father change into a different person . . . Consequently, I not only lost my papa, I lost my brightest memories of him . . .

The Angry Baker returned home yesterday from the first of many trips he will make to help his father die. My dearest love, this is probably the hardest thing you will ever do. But it is also the most wonderful, most important thing you will ever do, and I love you all the more for it.

Angry Professor works at LSU — ‘Large State University,’ located in ‘Square State.’ She can be as tough on the university as on some of her students, telling uncooperative building administrators recently, “Fuck you all. I hope you get terrible poison ivy this weekend and that it spreads to your genitals.”

Among her favorite blogs is Axis of Evel Knievel, created by another professor, this one at the University of Alaska, also extremely well-written. Among the questions he raises is whether professors who reveal their personal opinions in blogs face censure or worse from their universities.

I hope not. But that could explain LSU, Square State and Sylvia Coleridge.

– Sid Leavitt