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In Your Words

How do you spell that?

By David Houghtaling '63, MA '64

Fifty years ago this past September I walked the obliquely configured walk (aka Slant Walk) at Miami for the first time. A presumed coed actually asked to take my picture on that first venture. Thus had I entered Candide's best of all possible worlds.

From 1958 until 1964, I ... 1.) studied mathematics to earn a BA ('63), and 2.) studied philosophy to earn an MA ('64). A difficult test question—for me—on parabolas early on should have convinced me that philosophically I was not going to be a mathematician: I drew a picture of a country bridge with a parabolic arch in my blue book to answer the aforementioned test question on parabolas. The professor was amused, but made it clear that the subject matter of the course was mathematics and not art.

So when Dr. Robert T. Harris, chairman of the philosophy department, offered me an assistantship to do a master's in philosophy, like Candide, I chose what was best in this the best of all possible worlds and became a philosophy student.

Less than a year into my new found fate, Dr. Harris—with whom I shared an office on the third floor of Upham Hall—was called away suddenly to Chicago to arrange the memorial service for his recently deceased father. Just as suddenly, he handed me the text he was using in his semantics seminar and informed me that I would be teaching the class that afternoon.

I was familiar neither with the text nor the course. But in this the best of all possible worlds, I had nothing to fear ... until I walked into the seminar room and found that one of the three students in the class was John Dome. [Editor's note: John Dome '36, MEd '53 was director of instructional resources, having started Miami's audio visual services department during Dr. Millett's presidency. Also an associate professor of geography, John taught the popular "Geography of Wines" course for many years.]

I wrote my name on the chalkboard, explained my presence, and invited the students to enlighten me about semantics. An hour latter, I dismissed the class and set about to erase my name from the chalkboard. The last to leave the room was John Dome who congratulated me on my maiden voyage into teaching and then asked, "And how do you pronounce your name?"

In this the best of all possible worlds, my mortification absolutely trumped all feelings of optimism when—as I turned to complete the erasure of my name—I discovered that I had misspelled it!

I am David N. Houghtaling, retired philosophy professor, and not David Houghtling, philosophy graduate student!