Dr. Marsteller Chapter 2
2
Garret
University is situated in a valley draped with oak trees. Granite pillars and red brick buildings wear
rippling ivy. Most alumni, when
reminiscing about their time at Garret, always seem to remember the fall best,
when football and barbeques warm the air –the green and brown colors of the
Garret Moose facing off against their latest conference foe on the gridiron
offset with the red and orange trees, like the hot chocolate and peppermint
schnapps the students drank by the burning coals in the barbeque (brown and
green were on bumper stickers and window stickers - ‘Garret University’ green
outlined in brown). The obsession with
the fall may be attributed to the imprint on their memory of the heightened
senses of a student as they start the school year in a new environment at that
time, but the beauty of the fall at Garret was evident in a view above campus
from a helicopter (postcards sold in the campus bookstore), where the candy
corn colored trees buffer the buildings like a patchwork quilt. The view reveals a clock tower cloistered
together with rocks and greens and walkways plastered with fliers for the next
organization to join or part to attend.
Garret was
established in 1839 by a group of Methodists.
Sometime in the late 19th century it happily discarded its
religious affiliation and has become a major university, enrolling 20,000
undergraduates and playing Division I-A football. The University was named after the town
where it is situated, which was named after Andrew Garret, a 17th
century British fur trader who established a trading post along the
Quippitrinnic River and scoffed with an air of superiority at his French
counterparts on the opposite bank while languidly violating several
squaws. A monument in the downtown
square surrounded by rambunctious student bars and trendy shops commemorates
the site of the trading post and depicts Andrew Garret with a musket and stack
of furs over his shoulder peering in the distance with an intense glare. Although, ironically, he never intensely
glared at anyone, and instead preferred telling drunken anecdotes to
subservient natives. Someone annually
spray paints ‘Fur is Murder’ across it and it annually has to be washed off. Of course, someone then follows this up with
‘Fur Burger’, which has to be washed off.
And, more recently some prankster thought it would be funny to deface
the statue with ‘Fur Burger Murder.’
Garret
University was ranked 17th in the latest US News and World Report ‘America’s
Best Colleges’ and the conceit this prestige conveyed was not lost on the
majority of the students. Dr. Marsteller
always caught them speaking about themselves quite impressed, and he rebuffed
this juvenile association with grandeur with haughty displeasure but derived a
boatload of subconscious giddiness at being a full professor at such a prized
institution.
If the view
from a helicopter as it descended to earth and slid past the stoned, studious
or stupefied students, then reached the ground floor window of a 19th
century red brick building in a cozy alcove, budding green with the stale
pungent odor of blooming dogwoods, and a white painted window pane covered by
two elm trees, we would see a man in his late 60s through the window, with wild
white hair, like an albino lion, sitting at a desk with his lunch on a fine
spring day.
Dr.
Marsteller leaned back in his maple and leather chair with his four-piece meal
from KFC. He chose original recipe with
green beans and potato salad. The grease
glistened around his wrinkled old mouth and covered his entire fingers up to
the meat of his hand. Pieces of chicken
skin stuck to his cheeks like chipping paint on a Victorian house. He reached for the succulent leg (he always
ate the leg last) smacking his lips as a student walked through the door of his
office and interrupted his peaceful ritual with a godforsaken complaint.
-Dr.
Marsteller, I was wondering about my grade on the last exam.
The
student, amused by the site of a distinguished man like Dr. Marsteller- who was
a spitting image of Robert Frost at Kennedy’s inaugural, or a little like
Professor Dumbledore, if the hair was moved from the beard to the top of his
head - munching on cheap fast food like a drugged up sophomore after a game of
Madden, pointed to the offending question on the exam. The professor quickly used three or four
cheap KFC napkins, as thin as 1 ply toilet paper, to clean his face and
fingers. He reached over and snatched
the student’s test, putting little spots of grease on it in the process.
-Um, yes,
what seems to be the problem?
-On
question 15, I don’t understand why I was docked 3 points. I included Thioredoxin and Glutoredoxin and
the sulfide bridges.
-Yes, yes,
you forgot the enzymes. Thioredoxin
Reductase and Glutathione Reductase.
That was your mistake. The TA
really should have docked you 4 points, but I guess I’ll let it slide.
-But what
about question 11?
As the
student persisted it became obvious to Dr. Marsteller the kid was simply trying
to pick up a couple of free points. Dr.
Marsteller was 67 years old and after 40 years of teaching it was always
obvious when a student was trying to get free points. Once, he pondered why someone who knew they
were wrong would come in and complain to a man who obviously knew more than
them. He concluded they were all
delusional and it was some brain mechanism solidified through human social
evolution where subversion benefited them if they were accusatory. If they bugged the old man long enough, they
might get lucky. In his younger days,
Dr. Marsteller would have stood strong as the Berlin wall and not allowed a
point, even going so far as making snide comments about the student’s lack of
intelligence until they were brought near tears. Or he would have lectured the student on how
he or she needed to check all the answers in the book before they ‘assumed that
the teacher made a mistake.’ But now he
didn’t really care and wanted to get back to his chicken leg so he could
quickly scheme his next maneuver with Mrs. Viscane. So he cut to the chase.
-I’ll tell
you what; I’ll give you five points.
-Really?
-Yeah. You seem to have answered every question
thoroughly. Wrong, but thoroughly. How about five points?
-Um,
sure.
The kid
wasn’t stupid, thought Dr. Marsteller, he knows when to take a handout. He took out his pen and marked 5 more points,
then changed it on his laptop. The
student said ‘thanks’ and skipped out the door before Dr. Marsteller changed
his mind. A heartbeat later, Dr.
Marsteller had the leg in his mouth and was munching around the bone. He sat back and burped, then groaned and went
over to wash his hands under the lab hood in his office.
Besides the
KFC strewn across his desk, his office was immaculate. Typical with professors in his position, Dr.
Marsteller hadn’t done research in years.
The burden fell to the undergraduate, five graduate students and two
postdoctoral researchers. He simply told them what to do and paid them with his
funding. His lab was smaller now than it
was in the 90s, but Dr. Marsteller reasoned this was better, he didn’t have the
energy to keep so many people busy, and he could do more hard-hitting
research. In reality, his only funding
line was through Mrs. Viscane and it was all he could afford.
His office
was originally intended as an antechamber for the main area of the lab. It was
a relatively large room filled with bookshelves on one side and a fume hood on
the other for sensitive chemicals. The
bookshelves held journals from the field of his main expertise, anti-aging
research. He also had the latest
journals of Science and Nature – arguably the two most
prestigious publications in biology, Science
from the United States, Nature from
Britain. The fume hood hadn’t been used since the 70s as another one was
installed in the main area of the lab. On the wall opposite his desk were his
diplomas for his bachelor’s degree and his PhD from Yale. Every award he received was also framed, as
well as the covers of his most famous articles from his research. Most of the articles were from over 30 years
ago. In front of his desk was an old
leather couch with wooden S-shaped legs.
He believed the couch encouraged an atmosphere of relaxation in his
presence. But most students who came to
talk to him chose the old chair with flower-patterned upholstery. The couch intimidated them. They perceived that great men had sat in the
old thing – great men they did not want to be judged against in the eyes of Dr.
Marsteller. Between the couch and the
chair an end table stood with an old lamp on it. When he was working late helping a student
with a research paper they were writing, he preferred the lamp as opposed to
the main light of the room. The dim
lighting helped him think. He considered
the reasoning behind the phenomenon.
Maybe it has an evolutionary background, he thought, maybe in the dawn
of humanity, it would have been advantageous for our ancestors to think while
in the cave and away from the trepidations of the wilderness. Maybe we all
think better in the dark. I should talk
to Dr. Hamilton in the psychology department about an experiment on this
sometime.
He stood up
and drew the blinds on the window behind his desk and turned off the light,
then walked over to turn on the lamp.
That’s better, he thought, now I must get to work on what to tell Mrs.
Viscane.
This originally appeared in Dr. Marsteller