All in Time Due ((Part 6))

Well, and by now, you know SO much about me. You have SOME sense of what makes me tick and what those ticks might sound like. Perhaps they sound like music to you? Maybe even adventure? I would be naive to assume that something like sex couldn’t also be the noise too. But, let me NOT BEGIN with a derailing. Let me talk, in this piece, about my experiences as an educator. My intention in structuring this series as I have done so far is that each of the first five write-ups has a corresponding other. In this case, I am using Part 6 to, essentially, continue my write up about my past educational endeavors. This time, I shall place myself on the other side of the whole thing. That is, the side of the teacher. Because, At some point, I became a teacher. And haven’t really looked back much. To wit, I finally read those CU Boulder Teaching Evaluations of mine, the other day. I had been fearing doing this, as some of the Psych students didn’t really gather my style, much. In essence, they acted like passing squirrels passing by nuts, those sensible enough to eat but not good enough to munch on. As always:

WHAT THE HELL AM I TALKING ABOUT?

And, also as always, there IS a point. Either way, let me begin before I actually started teaching. Because, a lot goes into building preferences, and careers. We are often into things, virtually anything, before we even know it. I say this all the time. You buy a baseball cap, and years later you’re covered in expensive beer, paint following a miraculous play, at a REALLY GOOD game. You wouldn’t miss it for the world, though you had missed so many of them, before the cap. All of this to say, our preferences begin well before we even know it. Call it an INCUBATION PERIOD.

INCUBATES, COLDLY, IN THE STOMACH OF AN ACTUAL CHICKEN

BECOMES BRAVER THAN WAS BEFORE

HOW THIS WORK?

In spite of my randomness, I am quite capable of getting a job. Well, usually. I worked here and there during undergrad, like so many people do. This included proctoring exams, largely unpaid research lab work, call it research, and learning. While I paid for the learning, and not the other way around, I DID learn what it takes to teach. As such, let me begin, in a time-sense, with my undergraduate experience. You know what, maybe a little before, that.

When I was a kid, my stepmother, a relatively mean woman, asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I responded that I wanted to be a doctor. At the time, I had no clue that being a doctor and NOT practicing medicine COULD be the same thing. When she asked the next question, it was likely to find some way to make me feel bad. That was how they were in my household growing up. Everyone was all so mean. I didn’t know this at the time and so answered her question of Why I wanted to become a doctor. I said, “to make money.” She said that that’s not why people become doctors. Well, so many years later, I can say that, much like Mary, she had no clue what the hell she was talking about. She’s dead now, and so cannot see that she was, in fact, wrong. I am both a doctor AND a mathematician, and, no, I don’t really have any money. Just ask Allan. He got into all my details and so probably knows this. Something something, assholes all the time.

Still, this is about teaching, not depressing childhoods.

Is there a difference?

I am not sure, how these responses of mine directly relate to being a teacher, but they do. View it as a cup filling up, throughout life. It begins empty. You fill it with the things that happen to you, some education. Then, once you’re spilling your brains all over the place, you find a way to stain everyone else. You talk about your research, your experiences teaching, and you ACTUALLY TEACH. I am not talking about getting in front of students and DOING TEACHING. I am talking about ACTUAL TEACHING, inspiring students both inside and outside of your classroom, to do the right thing. Not just to become more like you, but to become more like themselves. To learn, if only for learn’s sake. Call it motivation, inspiration, and time travel. It’s like how if you make enough of the art of teaching, you stand to help others learn those things you have, earlier. It’s like you’re extending a ladder down into the Earth and pulling up all the bootstraps found down there.

And there are so many down there. Many people, whether they realize it or not, are good at this thing or that thing. It just takes time and energy to find out. I hope not TOO MUCH energy, like this post so far, but something like that. Once again, and maybe for the third time, let me attempt to begin this piece with my undergraduate experience. In undergraduate, which was, once again, in Psychology, I paid attention to what my teachers were doing. I could tell that teaching is-was something I want-wanted to do. I really like people, notwithstanding my overall sense of seeming the other way. When my fellow classmates struggled, I would try and help them out. I recall being the one in the group with so much drive and direction. Call it WILL. I had the will to learn, and can recall having had this desire since I was born, give or take. Whether this fuel was from my poor upbringing or some nature thing is totally up in the air. Suffice it to say, I REALLY ENJOY WATCHING PEOPLE LEARN STUFF.

Be it me, or you. Some of you reading this ARE former students of mine. Current, if you consider my mantra:

ONCE A STUDENT, ALWAYS A STUDENT

And I am not just saying this. It’s what I actually believe. I believe in YOU.

So, in undergrad, I was building a belt full of tools. I use this analogy often in my classrooms. The students get it. You have an empty belt, like that glass of potential, and you fill it with KSAO’s. LOL. Knowledge, Skills, and Other Characteristics. And, in case you haven’t caught on to this yet, that last part is virtually ALL of my existence. I have lots of knowledge and skills. But, man, do I also have a lot of character. And that’s what makes characteristics. In this case, the characteristics that make one a good teacher. Things like empathy, and listening, and caring. These can be skills and one can become knowing in them too, but overall, they, to me, are OTHER CHARACTERISTICS. But, what do I know? I know that I don’t care about the specifics of almost anything. Hence why I usually say things like: I Don’t Care. I DO care, just not about the same things as many others.

As it relates to teaching, I spent my time before grad school learning how to learn, how to teach, how to keep the attention of others. I got good grades, spent A LOT of time studying. I wanted to know everything. Then, when some time had passed, I realized that one can never learn everything. There are constraints, like time, and so even trying is largely a waste of, time. But, I wouldn’t take that all back for anything in the world.

I LOOK UP FROM HAVING TYPED A WHOLE PAGE IN VERY LITTLE TIME

AND SEE

THAT THE OTHERS IN THIS COFFEE SHOP

AREN’T OFFENDED

AKA

BE YOU;–;DO YOU

By the time I was admitted to that Masters program in Stats, I was ready to teach. I had the skills, and, as mentioned, the appropriate desire. So, in 2013, some 13 years ago now, I started teaching. I began with being a TA. But even this didn’t last long. I spent two semesters helping others to teach their classes, namely Introductory Statistics I. I was a TA for Olga Savchuk and some other person less Ukrainian who’s name I can’t currently recall. I recall him being African, and short, and friendly. I just can’t remember his name. Either way, I taught a few sections as a TA. It is here that some of you reading this would have met me. I would have been that odd guy in front of you, making you, FORCING YOU, to laugh, as you learned what you may have considered POISON, at that time. Well, stats is NOT poison. It’s probably part of why you were able to get a job. Off the top of my head, I can recall the names of a few students whose names I still remember from this time. However, I told myself, going into this,,, that I wouldn’t name students here. For several reasons, but mostly not to offend those that I can’t remember as well, as the others. You are still very important to me, but I sometimes have other things going on and cannot travel so fully into my memories, no matter how cool-awesome they may be. And you.

By my third semester of teaching, I had a greater sense of what I was doing. They made me Instructor of Record in my second year of teaching. Like I said, I was only a TA for two semesters! So, in the Fall of 2014, I became the-THAT instructor for the same course I had TA’d. Once again, this was Intro Stats, a course usually taken by students of so many disciplines. I had Bio majors, Stats majors, and just overall weirdos, in this course. I remember, on the first day of classes, and having at the time a MASSIVE beard, sitting in the classroom as a student, so as to trick the students into believing the teacher wasn’t around. Call it a trick, man. Still, a number of them have eyes and so could see that the guy in that little Canvas icon was me. They knew. But, they kept quiet. They didn’t wish to spoil the fun. This course is where I met Chris Hanni, who subsequently Nu-Metal’d with me in Dirt Circus, as I have mentioned elsewhere. He was a GREAT STUDENT, as I’m sure he still is. I can recall so many awesome students that semester. I can also recall many others that didn’t have very much patience for this being my first semester teaching. They had NO CHILL. But, I get it. I too was an undergraduate, at some point.

I can remember that, by the end of the semester, I was writing grades on the board in such a way so as to ensure that those who felt like they were failing could see that they weren’t. In one case, one of the students still didn’t get it, and so took to yelling at (and threatening) me. They wanted me to tell them that they passed, before I knew that they had. The TA’s were largely in charge of the grading, so I really didn’t know. I couldn’t say. So, I was the bad guy. And this is OK. It’s OK to be the bad guy sometimes. As long as you’re not ACTUAL BAD. As long as you don’t take to stealth vandalizing some other dude’s stuff, merely for saying “I don’t wish to live here anymore.” In spite of my recent inability to move on from the heinousness of my life, let me move on. The course was a good time. BUT, this is not how everyone saw it.

My department, mostly TSOKOS, saw my troubles with the more argumentative students as an issue. So, they did what I wanted them to do, before I knew it. Call it preference. Call it being a PAIN IN THE ASS. I was moved up in the difficulty of the course, if only to diminish that gap between my students and I. And I don’t mean power, etc. I mean: I like math and have sought to learn it like a dork-nerd. As such, they put me in charge of a 60-P Differential Equations class. I loved teaching this course. This was the first time I was granted the opportunity to write my own assignments, syllabus, all of it. And so I did. I didn’t relay on ANYONE’S past work. I picked up the textbook for the course and got to work. I made tests that included fun questions, the most fun being left to the realm of EXTRA CREDIT. I can recall, explicitly a question I wrote which involved unplugging a fridge, with wine in it, one that made the students use a nested Newton’s law of Cooling to solve. The ones who solved it loved it. As with anything, I guess. The others tried it too. I made sure the class was always ALIVE. Brimming with eccentricity and whatever else makes the students stay awake.

[begin

IMAGE OF AUTHOR, DATED

,

BORED AND SITTING IN CLASS

end]

Judging from my “evals” I was in the right place. I am a more complicated man for more complicated courses. Call it appropriate. But, please, don’t call it a limitation. I AM trying to get teaching jobs right now. So, yes, call it something positive. Next came a full year of teaching a 4000-level probability course. Now THIS was FUN! It’s where I met so many students that are friends of mine to this day. When I feel bad, they comment to make me feel better. You know, the signs of a good friend. These are good people. And I am glad that I was able to teach them so much. In speaking with them all now, I can see that they have taken on some of my more acceptable traits, and this is COOL. You guys are cool. This course involved mostly following the text, proving theorem after theorem, and writing tests that were often referred to as NON-TRIVIAL. As always, students will compare your course to those of others. They ask their friends about their exams. And have a tendency to get upset at you for making their exams so hard. Well, my intention was, and still is, to overlearn you. To make you BETTER than those in the other classes, if only to enhance your fitness within the context of the world around you.

There IS more I can say here, but man would THAT ruin my chances of getting ANYTHING but musical gigs. If I ever make it as a musician, I’ll probably spill my guts about everything. I’ll probably tarnish my chances of EVER BEING LET INTO ANY ESTABLISHMENT AGAIN. Once again, I taught this course for a year. Then, as was my path at the time, I moved on up. This meant teaching R programming to a room full of students having a computer in front of them. Each, not all.

IMAGE OF 100 STUDENTS LOOKING AT THE SAME COMPUTER

EACH HAVING THEIR OWN HOT DOG

no BUNS AND not LAUGHING OUT LOUD

Now, in spite my being on pace to finish this story WAY TOO FUCKING FAST, I have to go to therapy. Man, do I love therapy. Going, in spite of the STIGMAS and barriers, doesn’t make you weak, or crazy, or even unbalanced. It means that you are aware that your mind is a thing to work out, like your muscles, those that make the chicks look at you more. So, I will be back after that, something like tomorrow. here’s to hoping the flow continues. Dude, flow.

FLOW RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME

YOU CAN’T SPELL WU-TANG WITHOUT AN ORANGE-LIKE BEVERAGE

BEING INVOLVED

END SCENE

I’m back. It’s morning. I feel OK. And this is good.

I planned briefly, a moment ago, to proof the first half of this before moving on. Nope, that wouldn’t be random enough. Not cool enough for ME. So, where was I? [Looks Quickly at THOUGHTS] Oh yeah, I had gotten to teaching undergraduates how to program in R. I love R, and statistical programming in general. I have written so much code for “no reason.” That is to say: “No Paid Reason.” Please, Go ahead and remind yourself here that, sometimes, it pays to just do, to not worry about the cash on the other side. When I busk, like I did last night, I don’t think about the cash I’m generating, the revenue. I think about the tones, the way they hit the ears of others, the street even. I think about MUSIC ITSELF. Call it sex. because, in a way, it is, man. Now, in spite of my having had fun playing music for strangers, and Lauren, last night, I did, at one time, teach statistical programming. I remember this course relatively fondly. I WAS partying a bit too much, but was still getting good — OK perfect — grades, had grown a MASSIVE BEARD, and had the kind of students that didn’t complain too much. When they did complain, it was usually in their wheelhouse, things like admonishing me in front of the WHOLE class about my shortcomings in the use of THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Something about dangling modifiers. OK.

I don’t care! I am writing now. The road, and this is fine, is, perhaps, meant to be constructed by way of broken phrases and confusions of simple matters. How do YOU say it? Yup, you don’t. Well, don’t. What? My R course was lively, when the code worked. It worked almost the whole time, but seeing as I wrote MY code on a Mac and Macs have a few important differences from Windows, when it comes to R, the code would not work, from time to time. And this was during an exam. So, I fixed the code and decreased the number of required questions by 1. I had set up the test in the form of Choose k from n questions. Fortunately, the students didn’t complain, too much. I did get one complaint, in front of ENTIRE CLASS, from a person in charge of the security of the room. The teacher in the room before me had left the door open. This was a comp lab, and so a big deal. I came in to MY students PILED. Then, a person came in the room and told me to make sure the door is closed. I told them how I had just arrived, to find the students in the room. They pressed. So, I said:

“I’ll make sure to close the door before I get here next time.”

What a dick. Still, I AM a bit justified in initiating snark, in situations like this. I get it. They got it, I hope. By the end of this course, I had inspired several students to study stats more intensively. Some even went on to work as programmers. Here’s looking at you, Mitch. I believe this student went on to work for the government, with a recommendation from me. How funny. Hey, dude here. Hire this guy. LOL. Hire this DUDE! Now! If only it worked this way. And not in the way of writing mundane, but glowing, reviews, on students, to get them jobs. I can’t even imagine what the others say about me in such letters. Maybe you’ve heard of John Nash’s recommendation letter for his PhD, consisting of one line:

This man is a genius.”

How succinct. Also, how nice of a way to say: He’s got major issues but I won’t talk about those. Because, he’s smart enough to allow for the neglect of those things, here. If my advisor’s letters go like this, then awesome. Either way, they write the letters, and that’s cool. A bit like inspiring so many people to study stats. Stats is not an easy discipline for most, so this could be considered a feat. I consider it part of teaching, part of what makes me a TEACHER. Now, one might think that I next moved up the ladder again, to things like graduate courses, but this is not how grad school works. They don’t EVER let grad students teach grad courses. because that wouldn’t make any sense. Like how I leave the beginning of SOME sentences uncapitalized. I proof these things, but still make decisions like that. Something about the way it all looks in my eyes. No, I did not move on to teaching higher level courses.

My department had implemented a WORK MORE program by having all the TA’s help the help lab on campus, in the library. I was already putting in MORE than the requisite 20 hours per week on my courses. I was POURING myself into these things. So, when the department, under the rather temporary command of a dude I ended up arguing with a few times, said DO., I said NO. I am not generally a troublemaker, but, I do have a side to me that values autonomy and freedom. In this case, I did not wish to work 30 hours per week, to be paid for 20. My classes were going very well. I was told I have no leg to stand on. So, I told the guy, our vice chair, that he too had no legs to stand on. Following this, I had a meeting with the chair. HE found the whole thing quite funny. he said something along the lines of “You don’t always respect authority do you?” He went on about how he was MUCH the same, that he too had a rough childhood. What a cool man. Thanks, Les. And, for a man SO into bridge, he could be considered THE COOLEST BRIDGE PLAYER.

Eventually, and after a few more lightly-heated meetings, I was back to being a TA. I TA’ed for the very same course I started with, Intro Stat 1. Talk about a character arc. Call it a loop. And loops are cool. That is, unless you mean those drummer loops in GarageBand. In that case, write your own beats. Make mistakes. It WILL sound cool, eventually. Barely, I can barely recall being a TA that semester. I do remember being a TA for someone who had been a TA for me previously. Movin’ on up, Movin’ on down. In general, I was not too diminished by this experience. It, eventually, thrusted me into other departments on campus, where I would ultimately become a statistical consultant and graduate assistant. This is where my teaching took a turn for PERSONALIZATION. The business department on campus NEEDED someone for their Doctorate of Business Administration program, and I was THAT guy. I am usually THAT guy. This I can remember as a time of progress in my life. This was between 2017 and 2019, when I started my business, the very same whose website you’re on right this very minute. Analytllc. Here, I worked with C-Level executives all the time. I’m talking REALLY IMPORTANT PEOPLE.

IMAGE OF 25 PEOPLE GETTING THE SAME DEGREE

LITERALLY

A SINGLE SHEET OF ELABORATE PAPER

ON 250 FINGERS

This is ALSO the time that I ended up dating a former mayor. She once joked, maybe she wasn’t joking, that I was dating her for the story. Man, she must KNOW me. But, I genuinely loved her, so fast to fall, and so can only see her comment as kind of a joke. This was my last major girlfriend. An actual major. And THE last time I felt love in that way. As such, I’m going on about a decade or so out of true love. I loved Lauren when we dated again after that, but it wasn’t the same as the first N times we dated. Call it N minus 1. Maybe THAT should be the label for my last relationship with Lauren. Now, she’s married, has a kid. And a house too. And here I am, a homeless musician, looking for teaching positions. Maybe someday I’ll figure out how to grow up. Maybe not, ever. But back to my time as a consultant for the business program. I enjoyed this work quite a lot. I felt good about all of it, the projects and the way that these people were. Of course, I was also supposed to be completing my PhD, which I was certainly having troubles with ((See Part 1), so not everything was peachy. The dissertation was ALWAYS hanging over my head, was ALWAYS something I HAD to finish. I knew I could do it, deep down inside me, but I WASN’T doing it. This. This was my stress. Had I not had the dissertation to do during this time, I would consider this

THE BEST EMPLOYMENT-WISE TIME OF MY LIFE.

And, as with all things good, we eventually move on. Call it peaks. Mountains turn and we MUST head back to whatever’s left. For me, this meant moving on to teaching a REALLY FREAKING HUGE Business Stats II course. So many students. So many complaints. So much fun. I was recorded, bright and early, at something like 8 AM. Then, Sean, a REALLY COOL video guy who plays Magic the Gathering, religiously, would post them for all the students to see. Man, we had A LOT of fun. I would stop the lecture and ask him to zoom into my face for no reason, and he would. It was like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse meets ACTUAL EDUCATION. Here, I mostly used the materials of a former instructor. I didn’t have the will or desire to rewrite the whole thing. matter of fact, they told me not to. Do so. Am I dangling now? Either way, this is where I created my first success initiative for students. To explain, I had found that so many, of them, were taking this course again, and again, and again. So, I made some changes to how I approached these people. They started leaving, call it SUCCESSFULLY EJECTING, the course. It felt good to help others. Still does.

Because: Empathy.

100 IMAGES OF EMPATHY IN ACTION

A SINGLE IMAGE OF WAR

INFINITY REPRESENTED AS A BLOCK OF CHEESE

ANYONE who tells you empathy is a bad thing probably lacks it sufficiently to know its beauty. Here’s looking at you, Musk. And Allan. Hitler. Ted BUNDY. When you don’t “get it” you seek to make it wrong. This is essentially how racism works. And pretty much anything that resembles racism, too. So, I was teaching Business Stats II. Many students were enjoying the course, talking to me like a friend, and sometimes not just for a better grade. BTW, I can tell the difference. The students don’t know this, but I can. Call it perception. I COULD have probably kept on teaching this course FOREVER. I mean, they joke that USF stands for You Stay Forever. Now talk about an English problem. You starts with a Y, not a U. Still, U get it. I hope. What exactly made me leave this position, you may ask? COVID. It’s not that I had said manufactured disease. It’s that things were changing so fast and so much. I kept up throughout the worst of it. I moved the entire course online, and STILL made it fun. I did this all remotely, and often from Boulder. Call it a premonition.

When COVID died down a bit, my university sought to do one of the most ignorant things possible. They moved to fill the seats again. The pandemic wasn’t anywhere near over, and so I, once again, stood my ground. This meant telling the department that I would NOT put students back into the classroom. I would continue to teach the thing online, and would monitor the COVID transmission rates, to ensure that I could teach AND PROTECT MY STUDENTS. Given what we now know about Long-COVID, I was definitely doing the right thing. But, it didn’t work. My standing my ground meant that they were actually OK with me leaving. And so I left. This was in 2019, when my life started to resemble something like a cynic’s walk. You know, loin cloths, surplus time off, living out of a sub-compact. Like I do RIGHT NOW.

Here I was, making AWESOME MONEY. And, I threw it all away, for principles. And safety. Good. I feel good about this. The job was a lot with the dissertation anyway, and so this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Had I not left this position, I would have likely ran out time, and would not be Dr. Ryan Matthew Thurman. By the way, this leads me to think about how, in searching myself, in Google, that their system calls my use of my full name a MONIKER. Calls my use of “folk artist” SELF-DESCRIBED. Now this is FUNNY. That’s REALLY SKEPTICAL verbiage. I like it. It’s good to question your motivations sometimes. In this cas,e. leaving it. In this case, I had left a well-paying job, had a major break up, and had moved, in a rush, into a car. Fortunately, this allowed me to actually finish my degree. Call it Time by a river. To solve problems. And to go a little nuts trying to solve REALLY HARD PROBLEMS. Because: some math problems are so appealing, so beautiful, that they have the tendency to make one lose everything around them, in favor of doing one thing, the problem. here’s looking RIGHT at you Twin Prime Conjecture. And Legendre’s Conjecture, too. These problems have led me down rabbit holes so deep that even rabbits won’t go down there. Descend, to those depths.

But, finally, I finished it. As mentioned in the sister piece for this one, Part 1 of this series. Now, having finished my degree in 2022, I wasn’t immediately back in the teaching game. I spent a few years working primarily as a statistical consultant. I had a few longer-term and well-paying gigs that allowed me to stay alive in spite of my otherwise official lack of employment. This included modeling food data using a Negative Binomial Panel Model, which is a really cool thing to have done. Here’S to looking at you, Phillip. I like Phillip, a lot. And I am forever grateful for his support during that time in my life. Whether he knows this already, I don’t know. But, in 2024, I finally did it. I got my first post-graduation teaching position, a Temporary Lecturer position at CU Boulder in Applied Math. Call it Engineering. Most of the students were Engineers, or wanted to be as such. These were fun classes to teach. I no longer had my PhD to worry about and so could focus my attention on the students, and music. NEVER FORGET THE FUCKING MUSIC.

So, I made some friends in the students of mine. I inspired some of them to study harder, to be better, do better. And this says a lot considering that they were already quite good people. In my first semester doing this, I didn’t have much in the way of complaints. This allowed me to free my mind sufficiently enough to write Alien Pop, from scratch, in that first semester. I recorded it then, too. By the end of this semester, I had recorded an entire EP, by myself, with what little time I had at the end of each day. It felt good to accomplish something SO MASSIVE. Then came, the next semester. This is when my troubles really began. I was attempting to teach a totally new course, Psychological Statistics, to a totally new group of students, while trying to master the EP. So, I was back to stressed out. Not because of the album or the students. But, because the small town of Lyons didn’t know how to leave me alone. People were saying negative things right to my face all the time. I was riding BMX again and the local kids idolized me, so I don’t know what the hell was wrong with everyone. Many of the locals were cool, but SOME of them were so uncool that it was overall STRESSING me OUT.

Finally, sometime during this semester, I came home to find that the house I was renting had been illegally entered. They had left things askew and so I could tell. This is was really, really uncool. Then, I could tell that SOME of my neighbors were turning away. This implied, to me, that not only had someone gotten into the house, but they were sharing some of the more incriminating things they were finding. Not because I am a criminal. I am not. But because:

It only takes a few facts about a person to make a criminal. This is a paraphrasing of a quote I cannot locate right now, because the internet has become shit. Call it: Enshittification. Thanks, Cory. Either way, here I was, doing a noble thing for the area, teaching, not driving my car to work, being noble for the environment, and people were going after me, if only because I was inherently better than they were. This may sound biased, but having lived in Colorado, this is how some of the people there ACTUALLY ARE. I had a conversation with a Sheriff friend of mine about this, in the snow, once. It amounts to criminal penalties being lower there, to the people there wanting to outright attack others when they feel threatened, which is ALL THE TIME and for SO many reasons. Call it inadequacy. Call it: TOO MUCH. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is when Allan had entered my life. But, I won’t go back to dwelling on that. I’ll get back to my teaching life since then. I taught that final semester at CU Boulder, while worried about ACTUAL CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

ACTUAL CRIMINALS

INSERT IMAGE OF A PRISON CELL, EMPTY, BECAUSE THEY’RE ALL FREE

IN COLORADO, MAN

Now, lest I piss off a whole state’s worth of people, let me digress. I am on a rant. I have had enough therapy now to tell this. OK, so that final semester, outside of the criminally-induced stress, was pretty good. I inspired a number of students, PSYCH STUDENTS, to pursue statistics MORE, in force. I had pissed off some of the others by not writing certain documents I didn’t have the-any time to write, namely study guides that would have made my exams trivial, but I didn’t care. I wanted to them to actually learn, as I always do, and so chose NOT to say yes. Call it NO. By the end of the semester, more than I had expected had seen this as a thing of value. So, all is not lost. As for the Calculus class, I was teaching, I would say that it induced so many real-deal, real-world fist-bumps that my hand could barely stand it. And this is cool. But, since, I have not taught anything. And this was about a year ago. I DID start applying again in November, trying to put out as many applications as I could, so as to get a TEACHING JOB, again. But, and by then, that whole shit-show in Longmont happened. You know, the one where I realized my landlord was insane, a criminal, with absolutely no empathy. And that sucked. It would take me until February, a full three months, to start applying again. By this point, a number of the positions I was excited about had passed their deadlines.

Still, I am applying. I have applied to something like 20-30 schools, mostly universities. In general, I have not heard anything back at all. Maybe my CV lacks the SEO qualities required to be read these days. Red? Who knows. I bet the leftists in Germany found it hard to get work under their Nazian Gov too. But, and please, don’t let me go too far on THAT matter. The point is to tell you more about my teaching, how I do the whole thing, and what ends up mattering to me. I believe I have done this, here. I believe I have helped you to understand my perspectives on teaching, and so much more. At least I hope this is what I’ve done. For now, and before landing my next position, I will continue to inspire others, both student,,, and otherwise. To wit, I sold two albums IN THE WOODS the other day, and even inspired a former student of mine to heal and start writing. I am so proud of this all.

And, in finally seeing my own value, I am better able to avoid truly evil people. They are everywhere. I didn’t used to think so. Then, I did.

Sometimes all it takes is dealing with evil, to become good.

I hope I am becoming good.

Also, teacher me

please.

IMAGE OF STUDENTS FIST BUMPING THEIR GRADES

THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE AUTHORING THIS PIECE

I SHOULD LEARN TO BECOME LESS CYNICAL, MAN

PS — Usually, I start proofing these things before writing any PS stuff. Well, this time I am jumping the gun. This thing is like 8 pages long. I am scared of proofing this one. I will do it, but I MUST note my fear. Just checked. It’s 9 pages. What the hell am I doing typing so much so quickly? Why am I so fucking inspired? Is this part of dealing with evil too?

Double PS — I just watched an older woman watch my car like it was an artifact of another planet. A kid played with it the same, the other day. Maybe I really HAVE become weird. Still haven’t started proofing. Shit.

Triple Post-Script: It has just dawned on me that, at times, even entire semesters, students will clap when I enter the room. It’s like I’m a celebrity to them. I appreciate this, you guys. You make me feel nice. And it’s nice.

Of you.