Excerpt from Gillian Clark’s column in the Huffington Post:

 [...] When I started college, I figured I had enough cynicism to make it on my own. I was told that Patrick Henry jumped through a window down to a waiting horse after presenting his liberty vs. death ultimatum. And no, that is not pepper on those street-vendor pretzels. I figured I was ready.

Professor O’leary led a relaxed seminar where we compared Paris to Odysseus and Penelope to Helen. Entertaining and approachable, he had the class over to his apartment for cocktails at the semester’s end.

“Bring your paper by,” he said, squeezing my hand. “Let’s talk about it.” I was ready to be his protégé and spent all night with Virgil and Homer. I clutched the carefully typed paper running over to his place fueled only by black coffee and one hour of sleep. I’d been standing at his door for almost fifteen minutes when my gentle knocking transitioned to persistent pounding. When he finally snatched the door open, Professor O’leary was red faced, barefoot, drenched in his own perspiration, wearing a sweatshirt inside out and his belt was undone. He nodded at me impatiently as I told him all that I had discovered about Dido and Helen. He grabbed the exposition from my hands and slammed the door. [...]

• via: Cynicism 101 (Huffington Post)

… the prof could be in Comp Lit or Classics, I suppose … (and no, I could not resist the horrible pun in the title)