December 11, 2007

My Professor was on The Daily Show

Every once in a while, when I’m trying to distract myself from thinking about my upcoming surgery, I’ll google a name of someone from the past and see what comes up.

Today I found this:

Lee Gutkind is one of my professors from the University of Pittsburgh. His classes and his writing style fascinated me. Every time I scheduled my next semester, I would try to take something he was teaching. When all was said and done, I believe he was responsible for giving me about 13 credits or so of very well deserved A’s.

I interned for him at his then newly created journal called Creative Nonfiction. In fact, Creative Nonfiction turned into my first job out of college, where I worked an an assistant editor. This man could research the hell out of just about any topic, write about it, and make it interesting.

He used to take essays I had written and cross off the entire first three pages to show me where my story should start. I would initially want to cry, after all that work that I had put into my writing; but then I would read the finished result in front of the class and watch their reactions. I knew it was good because people sat there nodding their heads as I read.

Just about everything that is good about my writing, I learned from him. How cool is it that my professor was on The Daily Show!?!