Carl and I were both looking forward to the Genetics course in September of 1970. He was taking it because it was required for his Biology major; I was taking it as an elective because I thought it was an interesting topic.

We each walked out of the first lecture totally discouraged.

The prof was a complete bore.

I can’t put it any plainer than that. Perhaps he was a good geneticist in his field, but as a teacher, he was a total zero. A snooze fest.

During my time at Penn State, I can’t say that I found any of the profs or instructors especially inspiring. A few of them were good or very good, mainly some of the English profs here and there. And I’d say that Lattman, even though I didn’t especially care for his stand-up routine, may have been the best lecturer.

But this Genetics prof was easily the worst.

That’s not all.

You may have gotten the idea that I wasn’t doing all that well academically, and I wasn’t. I had changed my major once again, and I realized that although I was in my fourth year, I was not going to graduate, but I expected to at least hang on until the end of the academic year and then decide what to do next.

I had gotten an A in an advanced math course, Elements of Calculus and Analytical Geometry I, in the previous spring term, so I was taking two advanced math courses this term, thinking that perhaps I might switch over to major in math. 

That was not to be. I was having a hard time with Elements of Calculus and Analytical Geometry II, and that pretty much echoed how I had done in calculus. I aced differential and struggled with integral.

But Introduction to Linear Algebra was leaving me baffled. I remember talking to the prof after class one day, and she was remarkably unsympathetic. I recall her saying something along the lines that if I thought this course was abstract, then don’t bother taking any more math. And then she turned away.

So it was a discouraging term all around.

One would think I might have been prepared when at its conclusion, I received the notice from the University that I was being terminated.

Oddly I wasn’t.

I guess I expected that my academic advisor might have given me some warning that that was a possibility, but I had not heard from him, so it came as a surprise. A not very pleasant one.