When Brett Bourbon first walked into the classroom with his jeans and shaggy mop-top, he looked more like a bewildered father trying to find a PTA meeting than an English professor teaching a class for seniors writing an honors thesis. But there he was—and there we were, trying to make sense of the philosophy titles he rattled off. Nietzsche? Wittgenstein? What was the man doing? These were far from the novelists we had envisioned on our reading list. And what were all those geometric shapes called “concepts” he squiggled on the chalkboard? Couldn’t he just give us an outline?
But Brett, much as I hated to admit it, started to chip away at the walls I stubbornly clung to as a bibliophile attuned to absorbing written wisdom. Until then, most English classes had been well within my comfort zone. It was easy to rephrase a book’s idea. “But what do you think?” Brett asked. “What are your ideas?” Maybe things weren’t as set in stone as we believed. “Let’s challenge the concept,” he said.
I’ve had plenty of great profs, but Brett—who prefers to be called by his first name and once invited us over for a homemade meal—prodded me to look up from the books and find some wisdom of my own.
—Irene Noguchi, ’02
