What I Learned About Humans From the Professor Who Hated Me
How recognizing our limits helps us forge new openings
In graduate school, I had a professor who loathed me. And I mean toe-curling he’s-getting-hives-just-looking-at-me loathery. It was so very irrational but also so very deep. And, as is perhaps no surprise, the depth of the loathing was precisely correlated to the extent of the irrationality. His distaste for me was, in other words, not based on anything I had actually said or done.
I remember the moment this all became clear to me. It was the day he called me Martha in class. Given that he couldn’t possibly hate me any more than he already hated me, I felt freed up to inquire:
“Who the hell is Martha?”
Who the hell is Martha, indeed. He never did say, but from the look on his face, I’d go with: his estranged sister who shivved him with a serving fork that one Thanksgiving; his nun-nemesis at the Home for Lost Boys that he was perhaps raised in; or perhaps the girl in sixth period English who found his adolescent attempts at love poetry utterly lackluster. In any case, I am not Martha. But knowing that his psyche was playing out some down-with-Martha drama any time I entered his periphery actually made me feel better.
