Heading into the holidays I want to reflect for a moment on one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories. It occurred my senior year of undergrad, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I was in a Renaissance & Reformation course (intellectual history) with about 30 other students. There were only six of us present that day and the professor said that his lecture was too important for the others to miss– so he decided to cancel class and offered to meet us at Applebee’s for a 2-for-1 drink special—and that he’d buy the first round.

This was an unexpected and really cool experience. He was an older German fellow and used colorful language during his lectures– a tough grader too. I remember that he liked to challenge popular notions of history and historical figures and dig into the psyche of the material. He was really into Freud and the primal motivations behind people’s actions….

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