Inconceivable

When I was at BYU one of my favorite professors was Dr. Christensen.* The first class I took from him was this awesome freshman seminar on Comparative politics, where are only assignment was to read the Economist, and class consisted of solely of us asking him whatever questions we wanted. Needless to say, this guy is crazy smart. The second class was a giant monstrosity of class on political science research and writing. Incredibly dull. Or at least it would have been if Christensen didn't have a near endless supply of hilarious stories.** Things like how on his honeymoon, his wife told him "Dear, it would be better if you stopped giggling" and other fun little tidbits. Add that to endless supply of witty comments, sarcasm and other such awesomeness and Christensen made that class slightly more than bearable. However, when he got excited, which was frequent, he would start to talk in a really fast, high pitched voice. Combine that with the fact that he was a little on the shorter side of things, and well there was more than a passing resemblance to this guy:

So, when he passed out cards asking for our comments on his teaching in the middle of the semester, under the section asking for things that we thought he could improve upon, I noted that I would appreciate it if he would say inconceivable more frequently.

The next week at the end of class he started to discuss the comments he had received. Including how he was so offended that someone would compare him to the Princess Bride guy, how that was a bad person, and not flattering, and so on and so forth. I'm pretty sure he was looking at me the whole time he was speaking. I felt about two inches tall, and was convinced he knew that I was the one who had written that comment. But you guys? During that whole tirade he starte dto get excited, and speaking all fast and high pitched like. Towards the end he said that the comment was just inconceivable to him. He sounded just like Vizzini, and I felt justified. It was a good day.




*At one point he said that I was just like him, only liberal, young and female. So my liking him so much may have just been a case of supreme narcissism.

**Also at one point he called on my as I was dozing off. I had no idea what the question he had asked me was, let alone the answer. being a Church school I made a wild guess and said Jesus. I still have no idea what that class was about, but that was somehow the right answer. This has nothing to do with anything - I just like this story.