Physics prof Phil La Porta provides guidelines for college and life in Last Lecture

Be weird.

It’s not every day that a professor tells a room of 150 or so students that, but then this was no ordinary day, and Dr. Phillip R. La Porta is no ordinary professor.

La Porta was honored to present Rowan University’s “Last Lecture” on a recent Monday evening in the Eynon Ballroom of the Chamberlain Student Center.

Taking the floor in jeans, white shirt with rolled sleeves revealing tattoos, tie, vest and sneakers, the energetic 34-year-old physics instructor presented students, faculty and staff with a list of eight life lessons during the event sponsored by Student University Programmers.

Voila

But, first, a little magic.

La Porta, who earned a B.S. in physics from Muhlenberg College and an M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Lehigh University, is no mere physicist. He’s also a professional magician.

The Lodi, New Jersey, native started off his lecture with two dollar bills, tore one and crumpled it into one audience member’s hand, left the other intact and crumpled it into another’s.

“Everything in this world is about perspective,” he said, before asking the two volunteers to open their hands – only to reveal the torn dollar had migrated to the holder of the intact dollar and the intact dollar had moved to the holder of the torn dollar. “Our perspectives actually create our realities,” noted the performer billed as “The Modern Alchemist.”

In addition to peppering his lecture – which was rooted in the actual 2007 last lecture given by Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch when he was dying of pancreatic cancer – with magic, the man known affectionately as Dr. L also showed photos of family and friends and shared a bit of humor.

Loves to teach

La Porta, who came to Rowan in 2014 after serving as a lecturer in physics at Princeton University, said that at Rowan he does what he “absolutely loves to do – which is teach.”

It was those he teaches who nominated him for the award and who made up the majority hearing his Last Lecture. And this was part of what he told them:

Lesson 1: Never stop learning.
Lesson 2: Compromise isn’t a dirty word.
Lesson 3: Keep your standards high.
Lesson 4: Life is not an equation to be solved.
Lesson 5: There’s family and Family: know the difference.
Lesson 6: We all need to lighten up.
Lesson 7: Fail gloriously, but learn from it.

And, of course,

Lesson 8: Be weird. "Never be ashamed of who you are," he urged.

Keep learning and doing

La Porta shared a wide range of insights reflecting those lessons. Among them were: Don’t stop learning (he’s into cooking, and his best dish is fettucine Alfredo; plays disc golf; refereed roller derby for three years; recently took up kick boxing, and he is a proud white belt with no stripes; and has been on an award-winning trivia team), accept personal responsibility (“If I screw up in the middle of a lecture, call me out on it.”) and life is not an equation to be solved (“There are so many shades of gray in this world.”).

The Allentown, Pennsylvania, resident emphasized the value of family (“Our families are incredibly important sources of knowledge. Family is a wonderful thing. They help tell you how you got here. Family takes care of you. Love the people who love you. Love the people who support you.”). He claimed, “There is no right or wrong way to breathe.” He admitted that his hate of cats changed when he fell in love with his wife, a cat owner. (Squee the lap cat gave him a new “data point” and taught him that all cats “weren’t jerks.”)

Proud of his students

And he gave a nod to his students. “I ask my students to do absolutely ridiculous work every semester. They step up. I am so . . . proud of you.”

Brandon DeOre, 19, a sophomore biomedical engineering major from Winslow Township, New Jersey, nominated La Porta for the award after having him for classes in Introduction to Mechanics and in Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism. “He pushes us,” DeOre said. “He taught us to solve problems in a very abstract way that requires a higher level of thinking.”

To La Porta, the honor mattered. “Absolutely I was delighted,” he said. “I love my students, and I give them everything I have. I was really happy they recognized that, and they wanted me to do this.”