I was horrendous at science — unconscionably pitiful. I didn’t deserve to share the same classroom with anyone else who was even remotely competent at a scientific subject. I got a C in high school physics and the only reason I got a B- in chemistry was because my parents thankfully poured thousands of dollars into a Chemistry tutor.
José Vázquez, my college Life Sciences and History of the Universe teacher who sadly passed away last week, didn’t give a damn about any of this.
When I arrived in his freshman Liberal Studies Program class, José, as many of his students came to call him, looked past this. He was able to see me as a good person and a hard worker rather than a 19-year-old so cataclysmically awful at science that I would have mistaken bromide as a new street drug.
Rather than discarding me as a hopeless scientific have-not, José took baby steps and labored patiently with me. He understood that most of us in LSP science courses would probably not go on to become astrophysicists and he openly accepted this mishmash of students — future journalists, social workers and law students among them. For José, the most important aspect of teaching was to relate science to our daily lives, instead of forcing it down our throats. There were no three-hour tests or 100-page reading assignments. If possible, José would have had one-on-one chats with him as the final exam.
José was much more than a teacher though. During my time at NYU, I found it rare to connect with professors on a personal level. Luckily, I found José early on. We clicked, as he did with many of his other students. He was a kid at heart. Larger than his kind heart, though, was his enormous sense of humor. He loved weaving jokes into his curriculum and he never took himself too seriously. Above all else, this was José’s credo: to have fun with everything, to just take it easy and have a laugh. Despite the early start, José’s Friday morning labs were my favorite part of the school week.
José urged me to bring my other, non-scientific skills into his classroom. For an essay about aging stars, I analogized the lives of two older hookers and made them part of the solar system. Elsewhere, I would have been tarred and feathered, but José loved it. He talked about “Destiny” and “Chastity” for semesters after. We still joked about it years later when I was 21 over piña coladas at his apartment in Washington Square Village.
José was also an understanding, loyal mentor. He always asked me how my writing was going, and I know of other students he candidly spoke to about attending medical school. Those lucky enough to have had José as their LSP mentor all said that honesty was never an issue with José. If he felt they were taking on too much, he’d tell them. If med school wasn’t right for them, José didn’t sugarcoat it. He called it like he saw it.
In recent years, I hadn’t spoken with José as much as I’d have liked to. But my last moment with him was what I would have wanted it to be. When I asked him how his teaching trip last year in Iraq went, José replied, “Oh god, what a fiasco.”
In the word “fiasco”, I could see the grin on José’s face burst into a smile. All of his students can still see it to this day. I know that. There was no stopping José’s grin and chuckle, and you knew it was coming. He loved to laugh.
Over email, José told me he was at a biodiversity conference in Hawaii. It made sense — he loved teaching, he loved science and he loved his students. That was the last I heard from José.
Eli Epstein is a contributing writer. Email him at [email protected].
