I have this small, round, ridiculous English professor who could easily win a nation-wide Jerry Mathers lookalike contest. He is, by all accounts, a fantastic orator. The man is able to speak fluently and eloquently for one hour and twenty minutes without ever missing a beat, presenting the lecture material in this sort of over-rehearsed-so-as-not-to-seem-rehearsed fashion. Yet, for all his unquestioned skill as a lecturer, he manages to convey very little information in our biweekly meetings, successfully presenting only two or three concepts over the course of this marvelous oration. It’s all very unnecessary. It’s all very ridiculous.

This man is the sort of man to come to each lecture dressed entirely in black – black shirt, black pants, black socks, black shoes, black bag – so that at the same point in each class, exactly at the fifty minute mark, he can brush the chalk dust from his chest (he’s only used the chalk once in his lecture today) and comment, in a rehearsed unrehearsed way, that he’s managed to get chalk all over himself. This man is the sort of man to spend the entirety of the first lecture informing us that yes, the class we’re enrolled in is titled Principles in Criticism, but he’s gone ahead and retitled it Introduction to Literary Theory. This is the sort of man to dedicate his retitled class to the memory of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) in a sentiment which, while incredibly pretentious, is also wholly ridiculous. An acquaintance of mine who spent his fair share of nights zoning, recovering, and facing the aisles of OfficeMax with me tells me that I’m a cynical bastard for pointing this out before completely agreeing with me.

As we leave Principles in Criticism/Introduction to Literary Theory and begin our walk across campus where we share yet another building, but not another class, I note that it’s ridiculously cold outside, though the ridiculousness of the temperature doesn’t quite match the ridiculousness of our professor. However, he’s quick to point out that, were we in Antarctica, we’d consider today a warm, ideal day for rolling naked along the ice. Our incredibly interesting observations on the weather continue until a girl we’ve been walking behind the entire time joins our conversation. She used to live in Alaska. It’s very cold there.

The conversation continues and things are said by all parties involved, but at this point, I can’t remember the specifics. To be perfectly honest, they don’t really matter. As we’re coming up on the building both my former OfficeMax buddy and I have our next class in, this girl manages to slip in that she’s an undergrad, hey just like us!, and she works for some poorly named marketing company and, guess what!, they’re hiring. There’s this moment of stunned silence before we both make up some excuse as to why we don’t give a damn, and then this girl turns a full one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction and walks away. Having both realized that this girl just spent the last five or eight minutes earning the trust of two perfect strangers on the street via friendly, spontaneous conversation before pitching her sell, we both agree that this is a fantastic, if completely ridiculous, means of selling something.