Today is a somber day. Today Professor Richard DuRocher died. He was my professor at St. Olaf College for two classes. He taught my first-year writing course and one of my favorite classes "Shakespeare and his contemporaries". Though I can not say that I had the privilege of knowing him well I knew he was one of the kindest people I met while at school. I have a lot of mixed feelings about those years. Most of it was great but I went through some dark patches but I remember Professor DuRocher was always exceedingly kind to me. My thoughts are with his family. He will be missed.
One of my favorite memories of him was when we were in my Shakespeare class (which was super small). We had a foreign exchange student from Germany in our class. As another student was discussing a play she used "WTF?" to describe something. Professor DuRocher asked her to explain what it meant so that the exchange student would understand. The girl blurted out "Oh. It means 'What the fuck." Everyone giggled a little bit and Professor DuRocher just said "I didn't mean that way." It was such a silly little moment. He wasn't mad or anything he was just flabbergasted.
In his honor I have found my copy of "The Necessary Shakespeare" from his class and I am finally going to read Macbeth. No it wasn't assigned reading in the class that I skipped. I was actually one of the few who hadn't read it and we read Hamlet instead. Well now I am finally going to read it.
Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
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