“Can we really have a character in this play called Cock Man?” he asked without preamble—without so much as a salutation. Drowning in a 17-credit quarter and fresh out of four mind-numbing hours of biology and organic chemistry lectures, I was certain I must have missed an email from him. Surely, he wasn’t talking about the play we had been working on all quarter, the stage adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. I fumbled to get my scarf off and to stuff my bag in to a corner as we commenced our weekly shuffle around his comically small office to take our seats across his desk. “Mmm, let’s see. Maybe something like Wentworth…or Ainsley…something vaguely British.” Well, Jude is a British novel, so maybe we were still on track. And there! in his hand was his weathered copy, his thumb tucked between the pages as if to mark the scene of the character in question. But I had read that book front-to-back and was absolutely sure I would have noticed a Cock Man. While he brainstormed, I tried subtly to catch sight of a page number. “But I do want to keep that sentiment alive, you know?” he continued. “He’s such a dick. Maybe Shaft…Shaft-something. Shaftsburn, Shaftsbury—SHAFTSBURY! That’s it! Write that down.” Dumbfounded, I mechanically obeyed:

SHAFTSBURY:

As I waited for further instructions, I opened my own book to what I estimated to be the same general area, hoping to appear to be following competently along. He continued to blithely dictate dialogue and scene-setting to me and as I typed I finally recognized the chapter—I had even marked it in my book! Foolishly, I had been thinking of it as the bit where Jude runs in to his estranged wife at a bar. As I feverishly flipped through the pages, I spotted him, there in black and white: Mr. Cockman, “a handsome, dissipated young fellow, possibly an undergraduate.” That blasted, useless undergraduate who flirts with Jude’s wife for two paragraphs and then disappears forever—how could I have forgotten him!

While most days I primarily think of that moment as simply my favorite thing any supervisor has ever said to me in my life, it was also a microcosm of a greater moment in my academic development that working with that particular professor was facilitating. I was miserable as a Biology student. I was lost in the sea of 700-student lectures and crumbling under the pressure of increasingly convoluted lab work. I had taken an internship with my Shakespeare professor for a change of scenery and a new experience, but it opened my eyes to a very different kind of academic experience. He published a paper about religious iconography present in Pirates of the Caribbean. He was in a scholarly organization devoted to the works of (my favorite author) C.S. Lewis. He spent his summers drinking espresso and teaching undergrads about poetry in Rome. And he was getting money for it! He was supporting himself on work he enjoyed, work that allowed him outlet for his thoughts and creativity and insight.

Besides idolizing his life, I had also experienced new satisfaction in my own work under his direction. Watching The Lion King every night for a week “to prepare for an essay on Hamlet” was totally awesome—but more than that, I was learning to find the voice to validate the things that I loved and the reasons they were important. Reminiscing on paper about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 2008 production of Macbeth was a delight, but I was also learning to make my thoughts known clearly and concisely not only to my audience, but to myself. Practicing the study of literature gave me an opportunity to make myself known in my work in a way that test tubes and lab reports never could. I ultimately withdrew from all my classes at the end of that quarter and abandoned my pre-med trajectory to start fresh as an English major in the spring. I only wish someone had told me sooner that I could spend my years in the hallowed halls of higher education making dirty jokes in the name of professional academia. It was a perfectly legitimate pursuit, too: I would later sit in at the table reading where an actor from the celebrated Book-It Repertory Theater read dear Mr. Shaftsbury’s meager dialogue. Now, pursuing an eventual PhD in literature, I aspire to bring an entry of my own in to the academic discourse as rich as Cock Man.