WEBmikey: My favorite professor

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My favorite professor
9.09.2006 2:40 PM \| Link	Besides studying computer science at college, I was also introduced to a whole new world that I had never acknowledged before, and now I couldn't live without. I think every college student has a certain professor that they will always remember, and for me that was Dr. James Yoch - my memories of classes with him are the absolute best of my entire college life. The core classes for freshmen required two semesters of English (Composition and Literature), but because of my high school grades, I was offered an honors English course. I jumped at the chance, because it was a "two for one" offer - by taking one semester of Honors English, you got credit for both non-honors semesters. My professor was Dr. Yoch, so I met him on practically the first day of college. His plans for the class were simple - we were going to write a ton of papers (practically one per week), but his motives were to expose us to arts and culture (one of our required textbooks was Exploration of the Arts, which seemed strange for an English course!). And so, one week he would say, "The symphony is performing Handel's Water Music this week - go see it and write a paper." The next week it would be an art exhibit, and then a play, and then an opera - he even had us go to see the OU polo team play! All of these were entirely new experiences for me, but since I had an assignment, I had to go. All of us in class were gently "forced" to learn about all of these new things, and it definitely changed me forever. After that class, I was yearning for more, and I had definitely developed an admiration for Dr. Yoch. So, I took as many classes as I could with him during my college career. His Shakespeare classes were fantastic (we always read the Penguin Classics editions, and I still have them all), once again because of his innovative teaching style. Besides a midterm and final exam, we only had one other assignment that he called an "invention". Basically we were free to do any project we wanted, about any aspect of Shakespeare that we had studied in class. There were practically no boundaries! Some students performed in class, some wrote traditional papers, and then there were weirdos like me. One semester I created a role-playing game called Romeo's Quest (with maps, cards, and everything) that explored what might have happened if Romeo had realized Juliet wasn't really dead. It was geekdom at it's best, but Dr. Yoch loved it. Another semester I wrote a song for each major character in The Merchant of Venice to explore their personalities through music - I recorded all of these using a synthesizer and my own singing, and it was a big hit, too! I was able to spend a little time with Dr. Yoch outside of class. When I was just beginning to write poetry, I gave him a book of several that I wrote to ask for his comments, and he was harsh but helpful. I visited him a time or two during his office hours, and once went to his house with a group of students to work on a project. I remember he even advised me not to get married (as I did after my sophomore year), and even though I ignored his advice, I really appreciated it. During my final course with Dr. Yoch, several students wrote a modern-day retelling of Euripides' Medea for our invention, complete with music. We all worked on the script, and I worked on the music with another student, which we recorded (we even used a local church organ to record a "scary" piece that I wrote). Dr. Yoch liked it so much that he wanted to publish it as a university project, and he even secured some funding from the university for the printing. I was supposed to get things together, which included creating sheet music - this would be simple now, but at the time this was kind of an advanced computer task that I didn't know how to do. At the same time, I was married, swamped with my Software Engineering project, working at Eckerd's, and even planning moving to Tulsa (since I already knew I was hired by CITGO). I never got the project off the ground, and I felt like I had betrayed my friend Dr. Yoch. I just swept things under the rug, and so my contact with him ended. I've often wondered if he would remember me, but it's really not important now. What is important is that I'm a great lover of opera, classical music, art, poetry, Shakespeare, and many other things, and I owe it all to Dr. Yoch. He was my guide into a world of beauty and humanity, and I never would be the person I am today without his influence. Labels: memories


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