Oh, I did so enjoy your post. I’ve never heard the theory that anapestic beat was the rock beat. I’m going to have to look into that. Absolutely fascinating.
My roommate in college was a bio major who took all sorts of organic chem courses. I remember that her clothes will covered with little holes from the acids she kept pipetting. I wondered she didn’t poison herself. I remember losing an entire grade in biology because I refused to do a chromozone squash on this lovely translucent larva. It died anyway on the slide. Sigh. But I couldn’t kill it.
Fascinating how you found your career, but what a shame to go through health problems to get there. I hope what you learned solved a lot of those problems for you. We’ve got several people on FR whom I know are into health study. Best set of specialties anywhere!
I couldn’t have tolerated being taught by a Marxist. Stubborn streak a mile wide. I look back on college and I can’t remember anyone trying to push me into anything - thank goodness. And that was even when U of Chicago had a progressive reputation. I certainly never heard a progressive syllable in any of my arts classes. And I was a flaming republican even then, so I’d remember if they’d tried.
What I remember most about Learning To Look, Learning to Listen and Learning to Litter was that our final exam was Brahms Tragic Overture. Some sadist opened their dorm room window and played it through loudspeakers afterwards.
Waltz: long, short, short: dum-da-da.
Rock [ostensibly anapestic]: short, short, long: da-da-dum.
You are obviously more gentle than most science majors, if you spared the larva.
Yes, I nearly died at 32, after a long decline. I actually gave up and expected to die. My recuperation took three years, after which I went into the nutritional supplementation field. (I had never used drugs, had never smoked, and was never drunk even once; it was mostly a result of lifelong poor diet from birth, coupled with chronic bronchitis.)
When I spoke to that teacher after class one day about Auden, and mentioned his connection to Tolkien, she aggressively asserted that Tolkien was a racist, then stalked away. Since I have read the trilogy over two dozen times, and know a great deal about the author - and know that he in fact denounced all racism - I was incensed. Although I forced myself to be civil, I was not high on her list by the end of term (not that I started out very high, being a white male).
My best choral conductor loved to assign Brahms choral pieces to us, in German of course.