One Last Essay for Mr. Paulhus

I have today a sad task before me, one that started in joy.
After months of searching for meaningful (or, hell, any) employment, I was blessed enough to be hired by well established marketing firm founding a local satellite office. (On online film reviewer that works in marketing, there are several hundred people in LA that would love to push me in front of a bus, I'm sure.) Starting our local contact database up from scratch, I decided to visit my old Alma Mater to see if anyone was interested in earning a little extra scratch. There I learned that on March 13, of 2007, right before this term's classes started, someone very important to me passed away.
There is no tribute that would be suitably fitting, and certainly none that I could ever produce. As it is, let this humble page be some small symbol of everlasting appreciation.

Fisher College is something of an anomaly. If the main Boston campus is small and obscure, the tiny budgeted New Bedford branch should by all accounts be a joke. Instead, Fisher boasts some of the finest teachers a real student could ever hope for. Accept no substitutes among the blustering, tenured bed-wetters one finds in the Ivy League, if you want to know how to run a business, and here's a novel idea, learn from someone who owns a successful business! Not someone who's never held a real job in his or her life, and believes deep down that capitalism is icky. Many of my instructors were as different as night and day in matters of personality and technique, the one uniform trait being their demonstrable excellence at teaching.
There's Bob Miller, a good buddy whose sense of humor is surpassed only by his wisdom. Marcus Pereira (Oh Lord, I hope I spelled it correctly!) our hippie-ish psychology/sociology instructor whose classes tend to be both raucously free-form yet amazingly relevant to the subject being discussed. John Souza, the gentleman whose recommendation helped me land my current position, is so amiable he actually manages to make dry topics like balance sheets and stock options interesting.
Without a blush I will tell you that in four years of study, I never had a bad instructor at Fisher. Therefore, I hope it would be no slight to the others when I proclaim that my favorite favorite would have to be Larry Paulhus.

I think it's time I be honest with myself, if no one else, and write a little bit about my history.
In actuality, I almost didn't go to college. It's not that I lacked sufficient smarts, or even the will to buckle down and study, rather, that was a part of the problem. Throughout my life I was always bookish, reserved. I never played with the other kids, never really understood them. To call me a nerd would have been an understatement. A male version of 'Daria' with even worse fashion sense would be more appropriate. As you may already know, my little brother was born with autism. As he reached adolescence, his behavior became progressively worse, though I never hesitated a minute to stay at home and help my parents with him. Oh, my brother needed the care all right, but let's face it, I used his condition as an excuse for my own misanthropy, transferring to a type of half-hearted home schooling and withdrawing all but completely from what I saw as the imbecility of society around me.
I wouldn't say I was troubled, exactly, just, tired. Exhausted with people, infected with cynicism, ready, in my early 20's, to give up on the whole miserable lot.

After my brother himself went off to school, I finally had time to attend college, for what I then told myself were purely career-centered reasons. I was lucky enough to take in my very first term, a course on Early New England History taught by none other than one Laurence R. Paulhus. Now, Mr. Paulhus wasn't the type of fella you met every day; he was mild, almost fiercely friendly, but anyone going into his class hoping for a "self-esteem" pampering easy-A was going to be very shocked. In actuality Mr. Paulhus was probably the hardest teacher I ever had. He didn't give a damn if you memorized dates, names, and static facts; he knew what happened, what he wanted from you was why it happened, what it means, and why it matters to you. He gently pushed you, never imposing, but rather inspiring you to dig deeper into history and find parallels to your own life that you never would have guessed.
If I might flatter myself into thinking my present writing has some semblance of coherence and depth, it stems inexorably from my meeting Mr. Paulhus.
The man didn't simply demand the best you had in you, he gave you the reason and will to do more than you thought you ever could.

Now Larry didn't just teach college classes, he only had the time for Fisher in the evening as he spent a full day teaching High School in Fall River. In the great liberal wasteland of Massachusetts, among legions of public school hacks, Larry Paulhus cared. He was damn sure to never earn prestige from his devotion, and he certainly didn't labor for the pittance he was handed by the bloated Mass. power structure. He cared about what he taught. History, religion, art, it was impossible for them to be dead and dry when Larry was around. In his own unique style (something of a genteel refinement of the Socratic method) Larry allowed you to work out for yourself exactly how and why the subject at hand was relevant today.
The man refused to lecture; his classes were always lively discourses.
(There eventually evolved a type of interjection he jokingly named in my honor. Usually a semi-detached query -perhaps about the religious beliefs of the Wampanoags, or why there was always such a huge schism between the traditional doctrine of omnipresence and the "heresy" of pantheistic monotheism- that would take a team of scholars several years to answer.)

Yes, it's fair to say that Larry was one of the finest teachers to ever pick up a dry-erase marker, and all of this would be fine and good. Teachers are paid to teach, (which unfortunately many seem to forget) but merely being excellent at even a noble profession does not engender the type of devotion those of us at Fisher still feel for Larry. If there was one thing I could impart to you about Larry Paulhus, it's that as much as he cared about his work, he cared about people so much more.
Though it might seem counter-intuitive (to him perhaps more than anyone else) to refer to a middle aged, mild mannered guy in a sweater vest in such terms, but this man was cool as all hell.
Larry Paulhus was the type of guy who would help you to work a term paper around the hectic events of your life, end class a bit early if it everyone was worn out, or bring you a cup of coffee if he saw that you were fading.

Once or twice he actually gave me a lift when my car had broken down. Were you ever lucky enough to have a teacher like that?
Of all the extraordinarily neat folks I met in four years of college, I would have to say that Larry Paulhus was in many ways the coolest. He was always more than just a typical instructor. I am proud to call him my friend.

I think the normal sentiment expressed is the hoary old "Requiescat In Pace". I've never really bought into that. If I may indulge, one last time, in a little historic pontification for the sake of Mr. Paulhus; the epitaph "rest in peace" was not always intended as blessing upon the departed, but was originally something of a wholly selfish "we love you but please don't haunt us" bit of ancient spell casting. As with so many pre-Christian traditions, it was adopted into organized church ceremony with very little thought as to just how soppy and meaningless it is.

We Christians know that death has been conquered, resurrection and renewal await the virtuous, not a black nirvana to be coped with, and one could never find a better example of a kind, moral, Christian man than Larry Paulhus. Did not Our Lord say, even to the thief who hung beside him, "Today you will be with me in paradise." A life of peace needs neither paltry memorials nor muttered prayers to light its way to such afterwards. Let a kind oblivion be the hope of old pagans, and the dead bury their dead.
Instead, Mr. Paulhus, I wish you the best of your new life in Our Father's kingdom. I hope that Charlemagne, Spinoza, Lincoln, and Miles Standish aren't a huge boring letdown now that you can chat with them anytime you please.

And I hope to be worthy enough to take the second half of your Western Civ. Class some day.
I promise not to ask you too many of those unanswerable questions. :-)

April 24, 2007