The Chalkboard C

          Before arriving at college in September of ‘71, I imagined male professors would be stern serious types with thick beards and equally thick glasses. I was summoned to meet with my organic chemistry professor, Dr. Frank Dinan, sometime before registration for classes. I was skipping freshman inorganic chemistry and jumping right into sophomore chemistry, which was his class, and Dr. Dinan wanted to make sure I was not completely out of my mind.

        Upon meeting him, he looked very much like I had imagined – thin, bald, beard, glasses, not young. As soon as he started talking, however, the stern, serious part of the stereotype melted completely away.

        “Call me Frank!”

        He had a golly and shucks way about him – easy going, excited about organic chemistry and students in equal measure. A little concerned about whether I would be able to handle the class as a freshman, Frank agreed to let me give it a try.

        Organic chemistry was in a huge lecture hall with several levels of desks terraced down to a front bench and front wall-wide chalkboard. Also up front at both the left and right walls were scaffold-type ladders that climbed to small platforms. I never knew their purpose. I think the walls were cement block – the science building was ancient. The room had a chilly, ominous feel to it.

        The hippie movement had reached Frank a year or so before he was my teacher. On the very first day of class, Frank said he wanted to do away with exams and grades! He wanted a handful of students to volunteer to be proctors – experts on each chapter in the textbook. The other students would teach themselves the curriculum, one chapter at a time. They would get help from the proctors when needed.

        Upon completion of a chapter, a test would be taken, and if the student got 100 percent on the test, the next chapter could be begun. Anything less than a perfect score would mean the student had to go over the chapter again until the material was learned to a score of 100%.

        He was very serious about this. Part of me got excited; part of me was actually nudging me to be a proctor. If I were a proctor, I would have to thoroughly know the material in order to help others get perfect scores on the chapter tests.

         And then the moment passed. There are some subjects I would love to submerse myself in – organic chemistry was not one of them. Shortsighted of me, I know.

        But was Frank really going to do away with teaching class in the normal way and not issue grades?

        College was supposed to be something completely different, but this was becoming bizarre! I looked around the lecture hall to try and read the expressions on the other kids’ faces – and things got even weirder.

        My classmates were completely against this newfangled notion – especially the part about no grades.

        “I am going to medical school! And medical schools won’t even look at me if I don’t have a grade for organic chemistry on my transcript!”

        This was not the lament of just one person – everyone was bitterly expressing the same opinion, and not quietly.

        Frank countered that a new age was dawning, and medical schools were going to have to start looking at prospective students differently. Why not start with organic chemistry? This is a new way to learn the material, and there is no arguing that it would be learned thoroughly – why not be the pioneers blazing the path with this new bold approach?”

        “We don’t want to be pioneers! We want to go to medical school! Give us grades!”

        This back and forth between teacher and students went on for the first two weeks of class!

        At the end of the second week, Dr. Dinan asked me to meet with him after class, “My apologies for all the turmoil. This must be rather frightening for a freshman.”

        “I’m not upset,” I told him, “I just think that everyone should stop talking about it, and you should start leading the class the way you want to do it. It is your class, and you are the teacher.”

        “Oh, I have to listen to what the students want to say. It is not my class, it is theirs; let’s hear them out.” Yeah, I could feel the peace love and understanding – he was actually someone putting it to practice!

        We did not waste too much more time over the way we would be learning organic chemistry. By majority vote, Frank was going to teach, and the students were going to have exams and receive final grades. Actually, I think there was a small group that branched off becoming proctors and teaching themselves. I had my chance, but I opted for the classroom.

        Now, Frank loved to bounce around the room and was very excited about his subject matter. If organic chemistry had been easy for me, I would have thought the class was fun. But my understanding of the material was tenuous at best, and I know I missed out on a lot by not identifying with his enthusiasm.

        One day Frank was lecturing. I think he had lost me somewhere and my mind began to wander. He was excited and gesticulating and suddenly Frank climbed one of the scaffolds and perched himself on the little platform at the top! My mouth gaped open, and I stared at the other students – what was he doing? Just trying to get some concept across. He was always scaring me like that.

        But the day Frank shook me to my core was during one lecture when he must have gotten a little exasperated with us and suddenly he walked over to the chalkboard and wrote a big C on it and then walked toward the first row of desks.

        “What is that I just put on the board?” his twinkly eyes glared out at us.

        “Carbon!” my brain was saying. Carbon is the organic in organic chemistry, and C is the elemental symbol for carbon. Of course the C on the board is carbon – don’t mess with me, Mister!

        “Come on! What is that I just wrote on the board?” Frank was rocking on his feet.

        ”I’ll bet you all think that’s carbon!”

        “It is carbon! It is carbon!” my brain was screaming. I began to sweat and squirm.

        “That’s not carbon at all!” he said.

        Oh no!

        “That’s a chalk drawing of a C!” so gleeful he was at shaking my very foundation.

        “Carbon is a little bitty molecule that no one can see!”

        “NO! Carbon is a C on the blackboard. We can see it. We can make lines come off of it and attach other molecules and other C’s and that is real!” My grip on reality came loose. I tapped my sneakered heels three times and said, “the C on the board is carbon, the C on the board is carbon, the C on the board is carbon!”

        How touchy-feely new agey is it to do that to a person?

        C also turned out to be my final grade in organic chemistry. If med school should happen to ask, it stands for carbon.

310 20151106 The Chalkboard C