86: Mr. Mister, "Kyrie"

By Wm. on February 2, 2025

This year I'm academic advisor to around twenty students, the vast majority of whom are in their first year of college. In October I met individually with them to discuss classes they wanted to take come January, and one morning a couple of weeks later, they all embarked on a mad digital scramble within our campus's portal to enroll in said classes before they filled up. I think just about every one of my advisees wound up with at least a fair approximation of the schedule they'd sought.

The process of signing up for the next semester's classes has of course evolved over the years. My best recollection from my early days of advising is that students would fill out in triplicate a proposed schedule and drop it off at the registrar's office on their assigned day, whereupon it'd be entered in the order received. Things were more decentralized when I was in college--there was one day each semester when faculty representatives from each program would assemble in the gym and students would roam from station to station, getting added to class rolls manually. Yes, for whatever reason I still have most of my copies of those registration forms. Here's the one from the second half of my senior year:

Transy's system had its quirks. Since they measured internally by 'unit' instead of credit hour, the last digit of the course number signaled to other institutions what TU thought the credit value of the course was. And no, this is not a whole slew of afternoon classes: 2nd period T-Th corresponded to 10:00-11:15am, 2nd period MWF was 9:30-10:20am, and so on. As for some of what I was taking:

--I wasn't waiting until the bitter end to fulfill a requirement by taking Beginning French II as a senior. At the time, Transy had a math OR foreign language requirement. Most people chuckle when I tell them this now; I'm happy to report they fixed that long ago. (I took French in hopes that it'd help me when I got to grad school.)

--The arranged math class was an independent study with my mentor Dave Shannon, on an advanced topic in abstract algebra. At the end of the term I gave a presentation to the math faculty. (I also had an upper-level class in analysis that doesn't appear on the registration form.)

--Music 1274 was a new offering, Music Theory for the Liberal Arts Student, and this was addressing my final distribution requirement. I was happy to be there, though--I'm pretty sure I would have enjoyed a majors-oriented course in the subject. There's one exam from this class in my bin of college-era memorabilia.

I'm honestly not trying to brag by posting this--while I had experience reading music from piano lessons and playing the trombone through the years, parts of my performance here are explained by my then-solid short-term memory. It is interesting to see now what kind of paces students in the class were put through, though. Fun fact: six years later, the instructor of the course had relocated to a college in northwest Indiana and was married to a math professor at a regional college where I interviewed when I was on the market (he knew of my undergraduate background from my vitae, and showed me a picture of her and a couple of other TU professors when met with him one-on-one).

--One of the graduation requirements was completion of three P.E. activity courses. I'd had tennis and ballroom dancing as a sophomore; this time it was volleyball. And since 3rd period T-Th met from 11:30-12:45, that means three weeks into the term I was on the court in the gym as news of the Challenger explosion broke. Another student in the class, a sophomore, immediately exclaimed that her mother had applied for the Teacher in Space Project spot that had gone to Christa McAuliffe (though it wasn't clear how far my classmate's mom had advanced in the process).

After lunch I imagine I spent time in the back lobby of the women's dorm, numbly watching replays of the doomed liftoff. That afternoon I wound up in Dr. Shannon's office--perhaps it was our day to meet for my independent study--but I think we just talked about the tragedy and/or the meaning of life. It was the first national gut-punch moment I'd experienced. I would prefer not to have to go through any more, for all kinds of reasons, but I don't really expect that wish to be granted.

Casey points out on the 2/1/86 show that "Kyrie" is the first Top 40 hit with a Greek title; it's at #13, four weeks away from reaching #1. Mr. Mister would be second of three consecutive acts, bracketed by Whitney Houston and Starship, who were scoring their second chart-topper in a row late that winter. I've always liked it better than "Broken Wings." As anthemic pieces go, it's not bad.

My senior year of college was definitely Mr. Mister's moment in the sun--the three Top 10 hits from Welcome to the Real World comprised 75% of their Top 40 output. Like Toto, they were a band made up of studio musicians, and by the end of the decade they were pretty much done.

It feels--cheesy? trivializing?--to suggest that a large number of literal or figurative kyrie eleisons were directed toward the seven Challenger crew members and their families in the days and weeks following the horror of January 28, 1986. But I offer it up sincerely today; any other song I'd picked from this show to feature here may well have been an even worse choice.

Not surprisingly, AT40 listeners soon flooded Casey's mailbox with Long Distance Dedication letters to the memories of Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Reznik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. The one the staff picked to have read on the 2/22/86 show was from two Air Force cadets: "I'm sailing away..."