The Good Old Days

After attending the last meeting of the American Society of Parasitologists in New Mexico, I don't understand why it took me 32 years as a U.S. resident to visit what must surely be the most surpassingly lovely corner of this bountiful country. I don't know whether there has ever been a landscape that has so captivated me. There is something almost eerie about the crystalline clarity of the light falling on the burnished landscapes with their spectacular earth tones, a surreal, Buñel-esque quality. Thousands of times, in a thousand locations, the earth changes willy-nilly from lustrous gold to dull brown and back again without any attempt at gradual transitions. The aptly named mesas rise suddenly from the flat earth, like some massive dining tables set for giants that have long disappeared. The beauty of the landscape was so awe-inspiring that I can imagine how all but the most rational mind might abandon any semblance of sanity and join one of the innumerable local new-age cults, fervently declaring that the iguana is the creator of the universe. This was one of those rare occasions in which I was not displeased that some of our talks ended up on the last day of the meeting-it gave me the opportunity to stay longer and savor the beauty of the environs. And on the last day, my colleague Jim and I walked over to Old Albuquerque for dinner with two of my graduate students. It was an old-style tourist trap of a restaurant, a faux adobe construction, with real Mexican tile floors and fake Mexican paintings on the walls, and a cuisine designed not to distress the gringo/gringa palate. The waning hours of the meeting cast us all into a nostalgic, reflective mood, and Jim and I waxed eloquent about the good old days when we were graduate students. A story that lingers in my mind is one about a professor of biochemistry who was particularly hard on Jim. Apparently this professor had looked askance at Jim's application at the time of admission and declared that he would never make it. And, Jim's performance in the first biochemistry test had left much to be desired. The professor told him that if he did not pass the next test, he would be expelled. So Jim was not looking forward to the time the results of the next text were handed out. Jim noted that in those days students' test scores were not kept in confidence. The professor would call the students by name, and hand back their answer sheets, while announcing their scores to the rest of the class. In other words, this was before the days when bolstering a student's self-esteem was the paramount concern in a professor's mind. Jim said that he had never before dreaded this particular ritual as much, since his future lay on balance. Jim said that his professor went through the entire class in descending order of performance. Jim sat panicking, certain that he would shortly have to find himself some other career. Finally, said Jim, the professor came to his answer sheet and declared that this was the first time he had ever done this in his career, but he had to give this student 100 percent in the exam and called Jim to receive his answer book. Later that night, I could not help thinking of the changes that have occurred in graduate education, at least in our attitudes toward students and their attitudes toward us. All of us in my generation seem to have these blood-curdling stories of some professor or the other who delighted in humiliating us. When we remember these episodes, however, we often seem to look on these tyrants as those who really made a difference in our lives-hauled us up when we were falling short of our own expectations and capabilities and made us realize that nothing replaces hard work. How much of this re-evaluation of our sadistic professors is based on reality and how much is it simply our very human need to look back on the past as though it were purer, simpler, and more wholesome than the present? I wonder whether our students will look back on us with that same mixture of awe and repugnance. Is a good thing for a bad thing? I'm not sure. The fondness with which Jim and I recall stories about the martinet professors of our day makes me wonder if perhaps there are not times when the young need people who instill discipline in them. Are we failing our students with our new fangled reluctance to hurt their feelings? The problem is the dividing line between toughness and sadism appears to be a very fine one, and overall it is probably a good thing that the behavior of some of our professors is no longer permitted culturally-perhaps even legally. I wonder sometimes if there is a small loss. Will our students have these colorful stories to share? T.V. Rajan, MD-PhD (rajan@neuron.uchc.edu), is chairman, department of pathology, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Conn.

The Good Old Days

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