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1、I passed all the other courses that I took at my University, but I could have never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell thr
2、ough a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory pleased with the progress all the students were making in drawing the involved and, so I am told, interesting structure of flower cells, until he came to me. I would just be standing there. I cant see anythin
3、g, I would say. He would begin patiently enough, explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury; claiming that I could too see through a microscope but just pretended that I couldnt. It takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway, I used to tell him. We ar
4、e not concerned with beauty in this course, he would say. We are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flars. Well, Id say. I cant see anything. Try it just once again, hed say, and I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again a nebulous milky su
5、bstance.-a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. I see what looks like a lot of milk, I would tell him. This, he claimed, was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly, so he would readjust it for me, or r
6、ather, for himself. And I would look again and see milk.I finally took a deferred pass, as they called it, and waited a year and tried again. (You had to pass one of the biological sciences or you couldnt graduate.) The professor had come back from vacation brown as a berry, bright-eyed, and eager t
7、o explain cell-structure again to his classes. Well, he said to me, cheerily, when we met in the first laboratory hour the semester, were going to see cells this time, arent we? Yes, sir, I said. Students to the right of me and left of me and in front of me were seeing cell, whats more, they were qu
8、ietly drawing pictures of them in their notebooks. Of course, I didnt see anything.Well try it, the professor said to me, grimly, with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. As God is my witness, Ill arrange this glass so that you see cells through it or Ill give up teaching. In twenty-two
9、 years of botany, I- He cut off abruptly for he was beginning to quiver all over, like Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to hold onto his temper; his scenes with me had taken a great deal out of him.So we tried it with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. With only one of them di
10、d I see anything but blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity, and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement, a variegated constellation of flecks, specks, and dots. These I hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came from an adjoining desk, a smile on his lips and his eyebrows high
11、in hope. He looked at my cell drawing. Whats that? he demanded, with a hint of squeal in his voice. Thats what I saw, I said. You didnt, you didnt, you didnt! he screamed, losing control of his temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted into the microscope. His head snapped up. Thats your eye!
12、he shouted. Youve fixed the lens so that it reflects! Youve drawn your eye!Another course I didnt like, but somehow managed to pass, was economics. I went to that class straight from the botany class, which didnt help me any in understanding either subject. I used to get them mixed up. But not as mi
13、xed up as another student in my economics class who came there direct from a physics laboratory. He was a tackle on the football team, named Bolenciecwcz. At that time Ohio State University had one of the best football teams in the country, and Bloenciecwcz was one of its outstanding stars. In order
14、 to be eligible to play it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies, a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter. Most of his professors were lenient and helped him along. None gave him more hints, in answering questions, or asked him simpler ones th
15、an the economics professor, a thin, timid man named Bassum. One day when we were on the subject of transportation and distribution, it came Bolenciecwczs turn to answer a question, Name one means of transportation, the professor said to him. No light came into the big tackles eyes. Just any means of
16、 transportation, said the professor. Bolenciecwcz sat staring at him. That is pursued the professor, any medium, agency, or method of going form one place to another, Bolenciecwcz had the look of a man who is being led into a trap. You may choose among steam, horse-drawn, or electrically propelled vehicles, said the instructor. I might suggest the one which we commonly take in making long journeys acro
