1 May 2002 - 11:49 p.m.

Anyone who read my earlier entry today could have guessed that's what my title would be.

I went to work and had a typical day there, then headed on over to Aitch's office for our final meeting. Now, my theses having been due last week, it wasn't a meeting, per se, but a chance for me to blather for about 15 minutes about what a huge and profound influence he had on my life, cry, blow my nose, go downstairs, and repeat in Prof. McHotHot's class.

Well, that's not exactly how it went. As soon as he saw me coming in through the Creative Writing lounge, Aitch was all, "Oh, I was just writing you a love note."

What I will do here is pause for affect so you can think about all the possible scandalous permutations of that statement, which, fortunately, was a joke about the stuff he was writing on my latest assignment. My day would have really sucked if I had to turn down Aitch, who, though he was the Original McHotHot back in the day, is just not my type.

Anyhoo, our meeting pretty much took a turn for the surreal when he told me that while my thesis was great and alll, the first chapter of my novel was the best student manuscript in years, that I really needed to finish it and get to publishing as soon as possible because I'm just a modern Jane Austen like that.

Well.

Fuck.

Me.

So I spent the rest of the meeting with my jaw pretty much on the floor, wishing I had thought to get him a card or make him some magnets and stuff before he was all, like, lauding me and shit, while he autogrpahed his essay collection for me and told me about some guy who was now a very successful author and program head in Michigan or Maryland or some "M" state, I forget now, who had been completely awful the first two years of his undergradute career, but then, his junior and senior year became completely amazing and is doing very well, and that I am the best writer the department's had since then and the best part is that I was never even awful. Though, apparently, I was just okay last year. "What's happened to you since last fall?" asked Aitch. "Have you been taking vitamins?"

I can't even be sure Aitch was kidding about the vitamin comment. That's just how he talks.

Speaking of which, Gus postulated that he says the Jane Austen thing to all of his advisees. Thanks for your support, Gus.

So I left Aitch's feeling partly like an asshole for not telling Aitch enough about how he was this huge role model for me and how he had taught me all this rad stuff, and partly like a completely different person than I had been before our meeting. And I was even able to keep from losing it when I read what he inscribed to me in his book. So I thought maybe I would be able to handle the final Shakespeare lecture.

I was wrong. Note to all teachers: never end a class with Act 5 of King Lear. Note to all students: if you know/suspect your teacher will want you to discuss King Lear on the last day of class, please skip. You can always stay at home and cut your heart out with a butter knife and get the same effect without having to put on your shoes and lug your giant anthology to campus.

The good news was, I was not alone. There was a tremendously comforting feeling in looking around and seeing each and every one of my classmates fighting back tears while Prof. McHotHot choked his way through passage after passage of the bleakest lines in all of Shakespeare. I half expected him to break down, and then maybe get his foot stuck in something just to save face, but he managed to get through everything alright.

After class, I wanted to stick around and tell him how much I appreciated him being such a positive influence in my education and all of his advice and support and the fact that he is just the most brilliant person I have probably ever met, but I really had to haul ass out of there and seek redoubt so I could cry for real. I will definitely be sending him some kind of letter or email within the near future, but there were definitely not words that were going to come out sans deluge, so I hurried out.

While I think Aitch and McHotHot are really tied for my favorite professor, I'd have to say that McHH is really my sentimental favorite, since he started teaching at CoMputer U my freshman year, and having my last class with him today was really like coming full circle on my undergraduate career. I still remember our first class, probably the first class he ever taught here. He was wearing black pants and a gray shirt, which I only remember because back then he had like, five outfits, and I remembered thinking how hard it must be to be a new professor, when you can only afford one work week's worth of nice-looking teaching clothes. He was swetaing profusely out of nerves, which would have been gross on anyone else, but when combined with his glasses and blond hair, he looked more like a shiny new penny than anyone I have ever seen before or since.

I don't even really know why I felt the need to get all of this down, because it's certainly not making carrying it all around any easier, and I can't imagine that it's entertaining reading. Maybe I just want the whole world to know how much I love Aitch and Prof. McHotHot, because it's so hard to really tell them in a way that seems sincere.

It's a strange paradox. Of all the people I know, they're probably the two, other than mmy parents, obviously, who have really given me the strnght to take on the world and convinced me that I can do anything, which makes it all the more difficult to A) leave and B) turn all of that praise and positive feedback around and say that as much as they've been feeding my ego for the last four years, what really matters to me is just having had the opportunity to be educated by two incredible minds. Even more difficult is doing the latter without seeming like I am completely kissing as, or completely infatuated, which, in one case, I guess I kind of am.

Some entries, I think, really need to be abandoned after the writer has hit the one-hour mark. I think this entry is a good example of that phenomenon.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: