Story #2, about Professor Joseph Connors at St Thomas University in St Paul, Minn rings very true. I took his Romantic Poets course the author refers to, and to this day I reflect on things he said about Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley et al. Gladly would he learn and gladly teach. For a small college then (1966), St Thomas had an extraordinary English Dept. The oldest teacher, Herb Slusser, only had an MA - you didn't need a doctorate when he entered teaching in the 1920s. He wrote what became the standard college text on Freshman Composition. So when I was a freshman, I really wanted to be in his class. But he told me I didn't have what it would take to keep up in that class, and that really hurt. When I was a senior he drew me aside one day and said, "You should be a writer." James Colwell and John McKiernan were also luminaries in their time. Thanks for this telling.
On May 8, 2018 Tom Mahon wrote:
Story #2, about Professor Joseph Connors at St Thomas University in St Paul, Minn rings very true. I took his Romantic Poets course the author refers to, and to this day I reflect on things he said about Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley et al. Gladly would he learn and gladly teach. For a small college then (1966), St Thomas had an extraordinary English Dept. The oldest teacher, Herb Slusser, only had an MA - you didn't need a doctorate when he entered teaching in the 1920s. He wrote what became the standard college text on Freshman Composition. So when I was a freshman, I really wanted to be in his class. But he told me I didn't have what it would take to keep up in that class, and that really hurt. When I was a senior he drew me aside one day and said, "You should be a writer." James Colwell and John McKiernan were also luminaries in their time. Thanks for this telling.