There were very few college classes I ever enjoyed as much as Karla Dietz'.
I had been introduced to Shakespeare in middle school, loved the twists and turns of the stories, so I was already pre-disposed towards the classics. Professor Dietz taught two Shakespeare classes, one on the Tragedies and one on the Comedies, and a separate seminar on Dickens. There were many reasons, other than the undeniable fact that she was a fantastic teacher, that Professor Dietz' classes always filled up quickly at registration.
She had a light way of bantering with her students that was a refreshing change from the stuffy, upper-crust attitudes many of our professors projected. She had no trouble discussing her bar-crawls in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford, her "shit-hole" of an off-campus apartment, her hiking and love of outdoor sports, or her increasing hearing problems due to the many concerts she attended (I'd actually run into her, much to my surprise, at an AC-DC concert. I was shocked when she offered to share a joint with me). We commiserated with her when she broke up with a boyfriend midway through my first of three classes with her (and I doubted there was a single guy in the class who wouldn't have been ready and willing to take his place, myself included), bemoaning the fact that at age 26, her biological clock was loud and clear in her ears. She acted like a
real person
, not some pompous automaton.
Of course, I've neglected to mention the fact that at five foot eight, blessed with a pretty round face, clear brown eyes, long straight light-brown hair, and voluptuous curves, she was quite gorgeous. She knew it, too, and used it to her advantage. She favored tight blouses and sweaters that accented marvelously large tits, even tighter skirts and high-heeled boots that showed off every curve of her ass and muscular legs. It was no wonder that her class register was rarely less than eighty per cent male.
I would hardly call myself a nerd. At six feet and 175 muscular pounds, I loved sports and swam and jogged regularly. I wanted to really test myself by having a double major of literature and social sciences, and enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of the class discussions. But I really liked my English classes the best, as I loved creative writing and interpreting classic literature.
I had taken all three of her classes, and if there was such a thing as "teacher's pet", I was definitely it. I wouldn't say I kissed up to Professor Dietz, but I always challenged her in class, discussing different interpretations of the literature we were discussing. After the first class I took with her, she became my staff advisor. She had told me more than once that she looked forward to my papers perhaps more than anyone else's in her classes, since she found them not only well-written, but also interpretative and inquisitive all at once. She told me that she thought that with my analytical ability, I could go into the writing or even teaching fields. I came from a family of educators, and actually
was
planning to become an English teacher myself, so I found her words to be high praise.
It was the day of my last class with her. I was now a year away from graduation, secure with my 3.8 GPA and knowing I was about to pull my third A+ from Professor Dietz, and looking forward to my summer break. I had one foot out the door of her class when I heard her say behind me "Hey Mike, got a sec?"
I walked back over to her desk, where she was going through some papers.
"As usual, you did a bang-up job this year. I've grown to expect great things from you."
"Thanks, Professor Dietz. I've always enjoyed your classes, you know that."
"Do you have any plans for this summer?"
"Not really. Just thought I'd freak around the neighborhood, swim, jog, gig out with my band. Nothing major."
"How would you like to help me out, and earn some money in the process?"
I couldn't believe my ears. "What would you like me to do?"
"I have a couple of articles I'm working on. One is about the romanticism in Shakespeare's plays. When I started it, you popped into my mind almost immediately."
I must have flushed bright red. She put her hand to her mouth and gave an embarrassed laugh.
"That didn't come out quite right, did it?"
I laughed too. "It sure didn't!"
She continued. "Sorry about that. Anyway, I have need of a research assistant – somebody whom I can bounce ideas off of, who can help me write the article – it's about 20 pages – and critique. I can pay you, say, $10 an hour, cash, off the books, for about four hours a day, Monday through Thursday afternoons. It's easy work. Knowing you, it'll hardly be work at all. We'd be doing some of it in the library, but most of it at the 'shit-hole'. 'Research assistant' looks awfully good on a résumé. 'Published author' – I might even give you a co-credit on the article – looks even better. Sound like something you'd be interested in?"
I couldn't believe I was actually being offered a chance to work with my favorite professor. "I-I-I'd do it for FREE, Professor Dietz!!!" I stuttered out.
She smiled, pulled out a piece of paper and began scribbling. "Great. Here's my address and phone numbers. May I have yours?" I tore off the bottom of the paper she'd given me and wrote down my information.
"And by the way, Mike, since we're going to be having a different kind of relationship than student-teacher, we can drop the formalities. Please call me Karla. I'll call you in two weeks and we'll start then."
Right on time, two weeks later she called and asked me to come over to her house. Her "shit-hole" was exactly the way I imagined a college professor's apartment would look – books piled everywhere, dishes piled in the sink – and an absolutely spotless, neat writing desk. I brought my laptop with me and showed her how I could network my computer with hers so that we could easily share information back-and-forth. She laughed while I was doing this: "I'm such a computer dummy. I had NO IDEA that we could do this wirelessly."
"That's the idea of Wi-Fi. We're creating a way that we can link several devices together so that they can exchange information over a private network. I'll bet you didn't know we could do this with your iPad and your – and my – cell phone too."
"REALLY? And I thought I was pretty savvy. I can see I'm going to learn a lot from you this summer, Mike!"
It didn't take me long to find an online research library at England's Cambridge University, with a treasure-trove of information about the plays she wanted to concentrate on. We had a lot of long, deep discussions about the romantic aspects of Shakespeare's plays, and looked up articles and books in the Cambridge library to back up our assorted theories. As the assistant, I diligently took notes on my laptop and then copied the information over to Karla's computer.
One afternoon particularly concentrated on one of my favorites,
Romeo and Juliet
. This conversation was typical of what we used to do in class, but would later stay in my mind for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with education.
"So, Mike, you believe that the kids had an ulterior motive, other than just the true love they had for each other, to get together?"
"Absolutely. Juliet was being forced into a marriage by her parents, who were only interested in power rather than their daughter's happiness. They were, for lack of a more delicate term, trying to kiss the Prince's ass. Juliet didn't love Paris and probably never would. Romeo wouldn't know true love if it hit him over the head with a brick. He was, like so many of Shakespeare's other characters, 'in love with love' – in other words, the idea of
being
in love rather than knowing what love really is."
