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Why (as in yaverbaum)
were recorded but exits were not. Hence, if you did not wish to get on “chapel pro” (a form of probation that involved some form of punish- ment, such as having to attend more chapel, I suppose), but you did understand the importance of having a hearty breakfast prior to your first class, you would enter, exit, and then rush to the snack bar for you know what. In other words, you would be a chapel flasher. (I assume that the statute of limitations on that practice has run.)
When sophomore year started, my course load resembled that of other sophomores only in that we all participated in a two-semester course, American Studies, the course in which Professor Ziegler was my section leader. (See Chapter Twelve.) Everything else was more or less elective, and two of the elective courses may have mattered. First, I took a course called American Constitutional Philosophy and found it quite interesting. Although I certainly would not say that it impelled me to apply to law school, it was indicative of where my ultimate interests might lie.
Second, and far more important, I took an English course (Intro- duction to Literature) in which my professor, the extremely respected and well-liked Professor Cole, reviewed a paper that I had written about Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence and returned it to me with a comment on the top: “You damn well better become an English major.” It’s not that often that a professor, especially one as highly thought of as Professor Cole, says anything as complimentary as that. In fact, although my grades had generally been pretty good, both in high school and in college, I had never received a compliment from a teacher, written or oral, that in any way approached the one that Cole had delivered.
At the time at which I received his admonition, I had not really begun to answer the question that classically began every first conversa- tion at a mixer: “So, what are you going to major in?” If anything, I was probably leaning toward philosophy. The mysteries that philosophy explored and the rigor of its thinking, at least as I had experienced it in the introductory course, fascinated me. While it is true that English 1–2 and Science 1–2 had embodied, and had made me confront, new ways of
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