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.
I love Tolkien. I’m just finishing the audio book where the Hobbits return to the Shire. I’ve been falling asleep to it the last few weeks.
I remember being very upset when feminism arose because I believed EQUALITY meant just that. That men and women both needed to have freedom to act as they chose. I was raised in a time when I couldn’t give Zeiss Planetarium lectures because I was a woman. When I couldn’t use a female narrator on a computer movie. It was always economic excuses. A woman couldn’t be an authority figure and audiences wouldn’t accept one and people wouldn’t buy the video with a female narrator. But it quickly became clear that they meant for women to dominate, not reach equality. That infuriated me and I lost all interest in feminism that day.
I went to a convention that had Marion Zimmer Bradley as a speaker. She turned out to be a flaming feminist who insulted a meek young man who wanted to join in one of her workshops meant just for women. That was horrendous.
VERY glad to hear that you recuperated from that bad situation. Remember hearing Adele Davis talk. Unfortunately, she also insulted a questioner. Not a nice lady.