Several years ago I submitted this story to BYU magazine. It was put
on their online issue in the summer of 2005. He was a great professor
and example.
Invigorating Invertebrates
By Daniel H. Thunell (BA ’01), Pittsburgh, PA
In fall semester 1998 I enrolled in Professor Lee F. Braithwaite’s Zoology 204 invertebrate course. Invertebrates would be a tough class even without the 8 a.m. start time, but the combination of my late nights and a dimly lit classroom made attentiveness nearly impossible for me.
After several weeks of sleeping through lectures, I decided to write him an anonymous letter, pleading with him to interact with the class before starting his lecture to help us stay more awake. I slipped the note under his door one afternoon and left it at that. To my surprise, the next morning he read my letter to the class and addressed me as “Who-Who.” He said he would like to dedicate a song to the author and proceeded to do a boisterous song-and-dance routine. Everyone roared and whistled when he finished, and I was wide awake. This wake-up call was repeated several times throughout the semester, and every member of the class appreciated his sense of humor. On the last day of class, Professor Braithwaite dimmed the lights, placed a chair on a table and left the room. Moments later he returned dressed up as a spider and demonstrated the proper mating dance of spiders (with the chair being the spider he was trying to impress). The class erupted, and he received a standing ovation.
After his performance, I decided I had better introduce myself to him and reveal my identity. When I told him I was Who-Who, he laughed a little and said, “I thought Who-Who was a female student judging from the handwriting.” I guess he had the last laugh.
(Daniel Thunell earned a DMD and is now a periodontist and owner of Wasatch Periodontics, in Holladay, Utah.)
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