Dr. Thomson

So one of the classes I considered taking at the beginning of the semester was Meteorology 003H, basically the honors version of the introduction to metereology. It was way later than all of my other classes - 1 or 2PM, I think - and very very far away, I think at just about the farthest west part of campus from me, and also very high up in the building - maybe the top floor but I'm not sure.

So I rode my bike over there the first day (it was cold) and wandered around the sixth floor through somebody's offices to get to the classroom, which was really a computer lab. The instructor was a fairly old guy, but he seemed grandfatherly and kind of nice. His name was Dr. Thomson. He had talked to a red-headed girl named Elizabeth before class [she was in 311 and 312 with me too, small world] and used her as an example of his funniness, because she knew that he meant by "The dry Thomson," meaning that there was no "p" in his name. It wasn't very funny but we wanted to like him.

Then we found out that he was freaking crazy. He told us that he had the highest government clearance of anyone at Penn State and that he knew security measures that other people wouldn't know, and assured us that if anything were going to happen near the Penn State campus - LIKE A DIRTY BOMB - he would tell us so that we could get to safety in time. He also told us that the government was tracking his communications, so when we e-mailed him, we couldn't say anything suspicious or else the government would get him in trouble. By that same logic, he was also not allowed to travel as he pleased because the government was monitoring him and would take action if he did something they didn't approve of.

He talked a lot about the Bubonic Plague for some reason, and then talked about AIDS (HIV) and how "they" think that it's going to become airborne and wipe out 99% of the Earth's population or something like that.

He talked about the classroom we had and apologized for the bad location. He gave us a syllabus and showed us examples of weather journals that we wanted to keep that were really, really detailed. He also showed us a bunch of different rulers and got very excited that they weren't the same because one was based on the Danish inch.

When we all left class to take the elevator back down from the sixth floor, we didn't know what the hell just happened. We didn't know each other so conversation wasn't easy at first. I was looking around, trying to guage people's reactions, and I think someone chuckled. I think I said, then, "That was the trippiest class I've ever gone to." Everyone agreed and some people added comments of their own. I remember, walking back out to my bike, that one kid called his friend and commented on how terrible the class was, and said that he'd be dropping it immediately.

Peace out.