December is the Ultimate

Ultimate, not meaning the greatest but the last.

The last of many, many things. It's the ultimate month of this decade. It's the ultimate day of school (excluding finals of course). It's the ultimate minute that I will get to see some great professors.

We just had a sending off for Dr. Charles Rossman, Joyce Scholar and UT English Professor. Great, great guy - super enthusiastic about Joyce, embracing of his students, and obviously loved by his family: two kids, one who graduated from Law school, the other with an MD, both of whom traveled from Houston to sit it on his ultimate day of teaching, documenting with a cute little point-and-shoot the ultimate hour that he will share with young minds the wealth of knowledge and the years of research he possesses on Joyce. And this woman, who I mistook for someone simply wanting to return to college for reasons that I presumed to be a desire to increase her literary knowledge -- well, it turns out that this is his wife. She sat through the entire class and read through Ulysses for the second time in her life just so that she can spend with him his ultimate semester as a Joyce Scholar at the University of Texas.

This is me being sentimental and slightly envious. Envious because - well, have you seen those movies? Wonder Boys, The Squid and the Whale? I wonder if student-professor relations actually blossom the way they do in these films. Not exactly the way they unfold in these films, of course. But I mean, do they bloom? Do students (particularly undergraduates) actually form long-term real relationships with their professors?

Anyways, this is one reason why I'm really glad I'm graduating with a liberal degree here at UT. How can a student really relate to a professor on things like marketing strategies? Or multi-variable calculus? Or fluorescent microscopy? Or MATLAB (say what!?)? I don't think a student can. Beautiful humanities.

I'm feeling quite sentimental right now. It's December. It's snowing like mad in Houston. Biting, cold wind here in Austin with all 750,000 residents hoping and wishing for but one snowflake. One little snowflake. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. before the sun rose and listened to The National. It's the ultimate day of the preantepenultimate semester of my penultimate year of college. And this is me documenting this morning. If I'm this sentimental now, I wonder what the ultimate day of the ultimate semester of my ultimate year here will be for me. Guess, we'll have to see.

Ultimately, I want to say that I'm very sorry that you all will not be able to take Professor Rossman's James Joyce course. My apologies indeed.

And as one ultimate reminder for all those who may stumble upon this entry:
Remember, Madam, I never eat muscatel grapes.