In Memoriam: Professor Heyck
So I meant to write this post last September, when its topic was fresh in my mind, but unfortunately that also coincided with both our move from the apartment to the house (and the concomitant shift in my work/commute schedule from 10 hours to 12) and with "oh God wait DCP is really for real happening" (another thing I'll be yammering about, hopefully in the next two days.) It's been in my to-do list since then, but sort of on the back burner.
Last night I was reading Dark Ages: Mage in preparation for a crossover WW game I'm planning on running, and I got to the section where they recommend fictional and non-fictional sources for your game. I recognized a lot of the books on the nonfiction list, as they're kind of standards for the time period and are recommended by pretty much everyone. One book I recognized because of the author, who was one of my professors when I was at NU. And that made me think of Professor Heyck, who passed away last September and who was one of my favourite professors ever.
I took my first class with Professor Heyck sophomore year, before I'd even declared a history major. Of the three classes I took with him, it's the one I remember the least about, although it was the only one in his area of specialty (and I now wish I had paid so much more attention because think of the possibilities for historical romance novels set in that period). Then junior year,
enthusiastick and I took History of Modern Ireland together, and I was thoroughly delighted. Professor Heyck was hilarious, in a deadpan kind of way that you realized only after he'd finished speaking. He assigned more reading than any other professor I ever studied with, and the reading was always supplemental to the lecture - you really had to do both, because the reading gave context to the topics he covered in lecture. And yet I kept taking his classes because he was hilarious, and because he was really good at what he did, and because he specialized in the British Isles and that was something for which I had an intense fascination.
Professor Heyck started each of his 300-level classes by telling us what the final paper topic would be. When my parents and I went to the history department reception for graduating seniors, he told my mom, "I find your daughter fascinating. She comes to the first class and writes down the final paper topic, and then I never see her with pen in hand for the rest of the quarter, but she always gets As." I didn't take notes in his class because I was too busy being fascinated, to be honest; stopping to write things down meant I might have missed something. (I also have a very good memory for spoken words a lot of the time, which is highly convenient--it's a pity I didn't want an advanced degree, because my brain is spectacularly well-wired for academia.)
The last class I took with him was a 200-level, "England from 1688 to the Present," and it had reading equivalent to a 300-level class. It was one of the first classes in the new Pancoe Life Sciences Pavilion, and the classroom was very technologically advanced. He joked about it during the introductory session, saying that among the features were facial recognition cameras that would tell him who failed to laugh at his jokes, which made us all crack up. I remember showing up to the final exam, which happened to be on March 17, and one of my classmates was in the process of hanging an Irish flag from the podium. Professor Heyck looked at it and laughed, and said "It being St. Patrick's Day, those of you of Irish descent may be excused--but this being an English history course, I'm sorry to say that would mean you would fail."
That class was also memorable because of the textbook he assigned. Like many professors do, he assigned us a textbook he had helped to write. He prefaced this by telling us, "I assigned this textbook because I truly believe it is the best one for the focus of this class. However, I feel it is ethically dubious to profit from my captive audience, so I would like you to know that I will be donating my personal earnings from this class's purchases to cancer research." Although I had many professors who assigned their own books, he was the only one who acknowleged the elephant in the room when it came to that choice. (I still have all my textbooks from the classes he taught, because they were good books and good reference material. This was not the case with every class I took.)
Not long before he passed away, I had been sort of idly toying with the idea of getting an advanced degree (ultimately I decided against it, because anything I love enough to put in the blood, sweat, and tears on won't pay for itself) and I looked up the NU history department to see who was still there, vaguely thinking of going back and thanking them. I almost panicked when I didn't immediately see Professor Heyck, until I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page and saw that he was a Professor Emeritus and thus not listed alphabetically with the rest. I'm sorry now that I didn't drop by campus to say hello, and that I was too busy and stressed the weekend of the service to go, though I made that decision because I literally did not have enough hours in the day, which I think he'd understand.
I've had a lot of amazing teachers in my life, and I'm grateful to all of them (and even to the ones I didn't like or who weren't very good at their jobs), but Professor Heyck was one of the most memorable.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1114273.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
Last night I was reading Dark Ages: Mage in preparation for a crossover WW game I'm planning on running, and I got to the section where they recommend fictional and non-fictional sources for your game. I recognized a lot of the books on the nonfiction list, as they're kind of standards for the time period and are recommended by pretty much everyone. One book I recognized because of the author, who was one of my professors when I was at NU. And that made me think of Professor Heyck, who passed away last September and who was one of my favourite professors ever.
I took my first class with Professor Heyck sophomore year, before I'd even declared a history major. Of the three classes I took with him, it's the one I remember the least about, although it was the only one in his area of specialty (and I now wish I had paid so much more attention because think of the possibilities for historical romance novels set in that period). Then junior year,
enthusiastick and I took History of Modern Ireland together, and I was thoroughly delighted. Professor Heyck was hilarious, in a deadpan kind of way that you realized only after he'd finished speaking. He assigned more reading than any other professor I ever studied with, and the reading was always supplemental to the lecture - you really had to do both, because the reading gave context to the topics he covered in lecture. And yet I kept taking his classes because he was hilarious, and because he was really good at what he did, and because he specialized in the British Isles and that was something for which I had an intense fascination.
Professor Heyck started each of his 300-level classes by telling us what the final paper topic would be. When my parents and I went to the history department reception for graduating seniors, he told my mom, "I find your daughter fascinating. She comes to the first class and writes down the final paper topic, and then I never see her with pen in hand for the rest of the quarter, but she always gets As." I didn't take notes in his class because I was too busy being fascinated, to be honest; stopping to write things down meant I might have missed something. (I also have a very good memory for spoken words a lot of the time, which is highly convenient--it's a pity I didn't want an advanced degree, because my brain is spectacularly well-wired for academia.)
The last class I took with him was a 200-level, "England from 1688 to the Present," and it had reading equivalent to a 300-level class. It was one of the first classes in the new Pancoe Life Sciences Pavilion, and the classroom was very technologically advanced. He joked about it during the introductory session, saying that among the features were facial recognition cameras that would tell him who failed to laugh at his jokes, which made us all crack up. I remember showing up to the final exam, which happened to be on March 17, and one of my classmates was in the process of hanging an Irish flag from the podium. Professor Heyck looked at it and laughed, and said "It being St. Patrick's Day, those of you of Irish descent may be excused--but this being an English history course, I'm sorry to say that would mean you would fail."
That class was also memorable because of the textbook he assigned. Like many professors do, he assigned us a textbook he had helped to write. He prefaced this by telling us, "I assigned this textbook because I truly believe it is the best one for the focus of this class. However, I feel it is ethically dubious to profit from my captive audience, so I would like you to know that I will be donating my personal earnings from this class's purchases to cancer research." Although I had many professors who assigned their own books, he was the only one who acknowleged the elephant in the room when it came to that choice. (I still have all my textbooks from the classes he taught, because they were good books and good reference material. This was not the case with every class I took.)
Not long before he passed away, I had been sort of idly toying with the idea of getting an advanced degree (ultimately I decided against it, because anything I love enough to put in the blood, sweat, and tears on won't pay for itself) and I looked up the NU history department to see who was still there, vaguely thinking of going back and thanking them. I almost panicked when I didn't immediately see Professor Heyck, until I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page and saw that he was a Professor Emeritus and thus not listed alphabetically with the rest. I'm sorry now that I didn't drop by campus to say hello, and that I was too busy and stressed the weekend of the service to go, though I made that decision because I literally did not have enough hours in the day, which I think he'd understand.
I've had a lot of amazing teachers in my life, and I'm grateful to all of them (and even to the ones I didn't like or who weren't very good at their jobs), but Professor Heyck was one of the most memorable.
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1114273.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.