financial accounting 321. this class required buying a book as large as a buick, and almost as heavy. you know those classes where you could always leave the text at home? yeah. this wasn't one of those. the prof made a point of saying we needed it, every class, no matter what. and we did. and it sucked. especially since those were my nonstop 8:00-2:15 tuesdays and thursdays. many books. back pain. gah.

dr. chandra was a tiny man with large glasses and the cutest indian accent you ever did hear. you could tell he enjoyed teaching almost as much as he enjoyed sharing his various jokes. which were terrible, for the most part. but it was impossible to see the gleam in his eye and expectant smile on his face without laughing right along with him.

he is the only professor i can recall that used an overhead in conjunction with a reusable rolling transparency sheet attached to the projector. i mean, who does that, really? many class hours were spent scribbling down entries and notes, hurrying to get them down before they rolled away forever.

one semester, in either 1999 or 2000, during a chapter on investments, he brought in a copy of some stocks he had purchased. the amounts were fairly large, and dated back to the early '80s. "as you can see, this is some stock i bought from microsoft," he began. as if on cue, the entire room gasped in one collective breath. he marched on: "and you can only imagine how much this would be worth... had i not sold it years ago for an unimpressive amount of money." and the entire class deflated with a rush of air. we laughed with him at his unfortunate decision, and moved on to more exciting things like amortization tables.

my favorite quirk about dr. chandra was a slight translation issue. as in classes of most any discipline, hypothetical problems and case studies abound. and gyan, well... he liked to use them a lot. i cannot tell you how many times i heard a financial accounting problem start with the phrase, "now, if suppose...", in his very cute and earnest, albeit redundant, way. "if suppose we take these assets...", "if suppose we have this expense...", "if suppose" this, that, and almost any and every thing. i don't think he really had any idea that his most often used english phrase was grammatically weird, and i'm willing to bet that no one ever mentioned it because, well, it was just so dang cute. and it never got old. i am not ashamed to admit that to this day, i often find myself internally asking, "now, if suppose..."

i just learned that dr. gyan chandra passed away in early may. miami university and its accounting department have lost a sweet and memorable professor. and if suppose my hunch is correct, he will certainly be missed.