Chapter 15: Higher Learning

I started college in 1974. College in the seventies was weird, although it didn’t seem so at the time. We had become accustomed to a steady decline of the role of rules and standards in our lives, and most people my age assumed that they could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and resented the imposition of any limits whatsoever. Drugs? Sure. All kinds, on demand. Sex? Sure. Every day. Strangely colored clothing that followed no conventions whatsoever? Of course. Plot-free films that made no sense at all? Routine. Having some minimal requirements for graduation, or a major? What the fuck kind of Nazi regime is this?

Students fell into categories. There were lots of categories, but everybody you met fit into one of them. Greeks. Stoners. Engineers. Musicians. English majors. Math Majors. Gay men. The professors fell into categories, too, but not quite as neatly as students. So, for example, you could discriminate between “Greeks” and “stoners,” pretty much on sight. It was harder to discriminate between “Professors who will have sex with their students” and “Professors who will not have sex with their students,” but both groups of professors were well-represented.

If you were a freshman in college in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1974, nothing about the way the school was organized would help you focus on a field of study or a career. College was a process, not a means to a degree, certainly not a means to an occupation. We were encouraged to explore and to make alternative suggestions.

All of which was bullshit, of course. Employers everywhere value the baccalaureate credential because it demonstrates that you can stick with the program, some program, for four years or however long it takes you to get that bachelor’s degree. That you stuck with the complicated, if amorphous, rules of some institute of higher learning long enough that it gave you a diploma says several things about you. It could be Harvard or Pinson State, but it says the same thing.

Let me take something I said earlier back. It did feel weird, it just didn’t feel weird to anybody but me.

All freshmen who didn’t hail from Nashville were required to live in student housing. Most freshman men lived in what was called the Freshman Quad, which was incomplete, if not silly, name because all the freshmen women lived somewhere else. We were all assigned a faculty advisor based on where we lived, so everyone in the south end of the third floor of Hemingway Hall on the Freshman Quad had the same adviser, one Walter Ladd, a Mathematics professor. He showed up a few days before classes started and commandeered José’s room to talk to us all, one at a time. José was a Cubano whose parents had fled right before Batista fell. His father was a doctor of some sort who’d had to deal with more straitened means after moving to Florida in 1959. José’s appreciation of American culture was a little limited because he’d grown up in Catholic, Spanish-speaking, Castro-hating private schools.

When it came my turn to talk to Professor Ladd, he seemed both glad to seem me and worried.

“Mr. Baida. Welcome,” he said, as I sat in José’s desk chair. “I am Dr. Ladd, professor of Mathematics. And I’m delighted to note that you are interested in my field of study.” He was in his mid-forties, had long-ish, dark-approaching-black hair, balding but not graying, erudite-looking and slightly indifferent, with a slight whiff of complete asshole in his mannerisms.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m fascinated with math.” I looked around José’s room. There was a poster on the wall of two ducks having sex in flight over the legend “Fly United!” The only object on his bookshelves was a candle in the shape of a naked man with an erection picking his nose. José was a class act.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said. I couldn’t tell that he’d noticed José decorating tastes. “I see where you won the Tennessee State High School Mathematics Competition in 1971,” said Dr. Ladd. “I was on the committee that selected one of the problems.” He seemed very pleased with himself.

“Which one?” I asked.

“It involved three variables,” he said, smiling.

“The a2-b3+c3=0 one?” I asked.

“Well, there were two other equations, as well,” he said.

“Yeah, sure. It was fun.”

“Fun?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. We learned how to solve those in Algebra II. Line ‘em up right and they kind of solve themselves, once you know the trick. As I’m sure you know.”

“You learned to solve three variable equations as a senior in high school?”

“I think it must have been junior year, because I already knew how when I was in the contest.”

“Young man, none of the high school algebra texts have that particular set of problems. Some of the pre-calculus texts do, but none of the junior-level Algebra textbooks have them.”

“Well, Mrs. Wertheimer gave us lots of handouts that weren’t in the textbooks. I think …”

“Mrs. Wertheimer?” he interrupted.

“Yes, sir.”

“You aren’t referring to Dr. Margaret Wertheimer, are you?”

“‘Doctor’ I don’t know about, but her name was Margaret Wertheimer,” I said.

“You took high school algebra from Dr. Margaret Wertheimer.”

“I guess. If she has a doctorate,” I answered. Where was this going? How did he know Mrs. W?

“All right, my Mathematics prodigy, how would you have altered the three variable, cube-level factoring problem in the 1971/72 Tennessee State Math Competition to have made it more challenging?” he asked.

“Well, it would have been harder if you’d only given two variables with each equation.”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“It would have been more fun if you’d given three equations, each of which has only had two of the variables in it. That would have required either good induction or powerful intuition. I mean, it was a good problem and all, but it’s the kind of thing that if you know how to solve it, it just lines up,” I said.

“And how would you, Mr. Baida, set up the equations so that each equation only contained two variables?”

“Just solve each one for zero,” I answered. “Set ‘a’ at zero and work out the other two.”

“All three variable equations are not amenable to that solution,” he noted.

“Oh, for sure. But some sets of three equations are. And I’m not sure how I’d solve that. It would be hard. You might need four equations to make it solvable. I’d need to work on that with a pencil for a while.”

“The problem wouldn’t be solving it, it would be proving that you’d found a solution,” he said.

“I get what you’re saying, but you could solve it so that two different equations with dissimilar components were solved to the same value. Say a2-c2=72 and b2+a3=72. Then a2-c2=b2+a3 states all three.”

“More difficult to pose,” he said. “I was asked to provide an algebra problem for a high school math competition.”

“Ah,” I said. He expected me to say something else. I didn’t.

“What’s this about a double major?” he asked.

“I’d like to double major in Physics and Math,” I said.

He had this odd reaction. He shuffled his cards and changed his posture. He shifted again in his chair. “An odd selection,” he said.

“Really? I thought it would be quite common,” I said. “They seem so closely related.”

“No,” he answered, firmly. “Pure mathematics is pure reason. A completely intellectual exercise. Physics and engineering and computer programming and that kind of thing is an attempt to describe observations in mathematical terms. Physics is much more like Botany or Journalism than it is like Mathematics. Math is pure. We don’t think about how it meshes with the observable universe.”

I wanted to ask why every math book I’d ever opened had so many word problems in it if math was so divorced from reality, but decided I’d probably irritated him enough already.

He looked at me expectantly, hoping he’d convinced me to give up this Physics foolishness, but I had nothing much to say, so I just looked back at him.

“Well, I guess we’re going to put you down as a double major, for now, but I will make a note to revisit this idea with you next semester,” he said. “Or perhaps next year. You won’t take much of either subject your freshman year.”

“Okay.”

“That leaves the question of your minor,” he said.

“Aside from Physics and Math, all I really want to learn is languages,” I said.

“Which ones?”

“Greek and Italian,” I said.

“Modern Greek? Attic?” he asked.

“Koine,” I said.

“Why?” he asked. He disliked me already, and his bafflement was colored by his asshole-ishness.

“To read Aristotle, Josephus, and the New Testament.” He instantly deduced that I was a Jesus Freak and adjusted his attitude accordingly.

“I see,” he said, and raised his eyebrows. “Greek is in the Classics department, and Italian is its own department. Neither will amount to a minor on its own. If you add Latin, you could get a Classics minor.”

“I already know Latin,” I said.

“You already know Latin,” he said, plainly disbelieving me.

“Yes, sir.”

“And just where did you pick it up?” he asked.

“My mom had a textbook from her grammar school on the shelves when I was a kid, and I read that. Then I took it in high school.”

He’d had about enough of me. “Translate ‘da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo,’ he said, enunciating carefully.

“Roughly, ‘make me pure and virginal, but not just yet,’” I said.

He was surprised. “You know the quote?” he asked.

“I’ve heard it in English, but never before in Latin. I think St. Augustine said something like that when he was still sinning but thinking of saintliness.”

“So you could have just recognized the quote,” he said, looking at me critically. “Let’s have you translate some modern English phrase into Latin.”

There was a knock at the door. A young man with a ginger beard and long frizzy hair, black-rimmed glasses, and absurdly loud pants opened the door. His name was Milton, from the far end of our hall. The night before he’d been stoned beyond belief and was trying to remember whether his favorite Captain Beefheart song was titled “Big-Eyed Dudes From Venus” or “Big-Eyed Beings From Venus,” and the fact that he was unable to remember had him on the verge of tears.

“Mr. Ladd?” asked Milton.

“Doctor Ladd,” he answered. “Yes?”

“I have the 1:30 appointment,” he said, and came in.

“As you should be able to see Mr. …”

“Milton.”

“Mr. Milton, Mr. Baida and I are not done. So if you will wait in the hall…” Milton made a sheepish face and left, closing the door behind him. Ladd looked at me. “Where were we?” he asked.

“You don’t think I know Latin,” I said.

“Ah, yes. Translate some common modern phrase into Latin,” he said.

“Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora,” I said. He drew his head back and frowned.

“What’s that mean?” he demanded.

“Roughly, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

“No it doesn’t,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything about bushes. That was something about eggs.”

“Well, yes,” I answered. “Literally, ‘better eggs now than chickens tomorrow.’”

“But you’re still remembering, not translating,” he said. True enough. “Translate ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before.’”

I thought for a second. “I’d say ‘praecessi audacter qua haud vir has antea viator,’ I guess,” I said. I realized as I tried to translate it that my Latin was really rusty, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t follow. He would need to write it down and look at it to decipher it, and he wasn’t going to do that. He thought a few seconds.

“I’m not so sure about that,” he said, either briskly or dismissively, depending on your point of view. “What courses do you want to register for?” he asked, re-opening his file folder on me.

“Calculus 201, Physics 202, English 101, Greek 108, and History 101.” He didn’t seem to be listening. He looked up at me.

“It says here you graduated from high school in 1972,” he said.

“I did.”

“What have you been doing for the last two years?” he asked.

“Travelling. Odd jobs. Deciding what I wanted to do. Playing pool.”

“And now, it appears, you are ready to resume your education.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what classes do you want to register for?” he asked.

“Calculus 201, Physics 202, English 101, Greek 108, and History 101,” I said.

“Pre-Calculus, Mathematics 105, is a prerequisite for Calculus 201,” he said.

“According to the catalogue, that’s waivable with academic advisor approval.”

“How do I know you’re ready for Calculus?” he asked.

“I took Pre-Calculus in high school,” I said.

“High school programs are notoriously spotty,” he answered.

“I made straight A’s in high school,” I said. “I won first place in the won the Tennessee State High School Mathematics Competition in 1972. I’m a highly motivated student.” I shrugged.

“So you’re choosing to ignore my strong advice that you take Mathematics 105.”

“That’s not the way I’d put it,” I said.

“And this Physics course you want to sign up for. It’s called “Physics for Physics Majors.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You don’t need to take that. You’re a Math major.”

“I’m a double major.”

He glared at me for a few minutes. “I don’t know when I’ve encountered a more pig-headed young man,” he said. “You’re going to find that this university isn’t like a pool hall. Constant work is required, and the sage advice of elders and experienced academics is something to be prized, not ignored. I’m going to approve every one of these courses you want to sign up for. You’re going to quickly find out you’re in over your head. Then we’ll talk about your real academic goals. Thank you. You may go.”

Milton was dutifully standing in the hall. He smelled faintly of marijuana. I wondered if Prof. Ladd would notice.