My wife and I are using some of the extra time we have in retirement to volunteer to do some modest things at our church here in Cephiro. We like it because everyone is, like us, a refugee from somewhere else, and so we're taken at face value rather than seen in terms of our family or regional history. (I'm a Southern boy and my wife is an Albany-born Yankee girl.)
So it's easy to forget where you've been and what you've done. But sometimes life has odd surprises in store. Today our volunteer job was to help welcome a youth group from a Pennsylvania church move into our church's new vacation center for a weekend of beach fun and Bible study. (I'd guess more of the first, given the gear they brought, but of course the center comes well supplied with Bibles.) As I helped lug in bags and boogie boards, my wife saw the Pastor in charge of the group looking at me curiously.
"I know that man," he said, "but from where?" He asked my name, what I did, and finally where we'd lived before our Cephiro transfer. "Ah, that's it!" he said. "I had your husband for a course when I was in college. Bible as Literature. I still have the textbook, and use it sometimes for sermons."
For my part, I didn't immediately recognize him, but I remembered the class well. It was in 1992, the last time I taught it, in fact, and it drew only eight students, four who were obviously intrigued by the material and worked hard, and four who were added at the last minute and were (like many students at my campus) entry-level reader/writers. On puzzling over the Pastor's name and face, I finally placed him as one of the first bunch, a quiet, intense sort who wrote a long reaction journal to the readings in unusual angular handwriting.
But being used to having courses like this evaporate at the end of the semester into air, thin air as Prospero would have it, I was properly set back for once to find that one of my courses had set a student on the track to divinity school.
File under "Bread cast on the water" (Ecclesiastes 11:1). Sometimes you get something more than wet, moldy bread back in return.
Ya never know...
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iceman57
- Senpai - Elder
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Nice story.
I once had to manage a university training with a student attached to my desk for a year with periodic meeting. I was a mechanical designer in my past life in automotive industry. I tryed to taught my best the "tricks" of the industry business, first by taking his drawing and put several cross on the non mechanicaly possible part to engine. After some months he produced nice tool prototypes and progressively we choose one to be applied on the machine for longer tests. The student selected with some advices his own components, suppliers, discussed prices, ringed them to arrange meetings. I really enjoyed to work with him.
Then come the big day of the audition of the student with a Powerpoint presentation and a jury. I previously met his referent teacher who was the literrature teacher totally enjoyed by industry (maybe she missed her way) and then saw the head of jury at the end of the classroon. That was my university department head while I was myself a university student a decade earlier... that was really surprising.
The student's hand were shaking while demonstrating, that was cute. Fortunaly he revived his mind and mastered the presentation of the project he worked on for a year. At the end of the presentation was deliberation, and the department head asked me "What do you think about ?" and I replied "From all the guy you will see demonstrating their work during this audition week, he's the only one that next monday can be hired by a company and operationnal". He looked at the litterature teacher and asked her how was his year ratings, she replied that this was average. He looked back at me and said "A+, graduated".
When the student heard his "A+" he was screaming inside. He brought me and a teammate to a beertender for drinks. Don't know what the student is doing now as I didn't keep the contact, but that was really a pleasant feeling to see that history repeats from time to time...
I once had to manage a university training with a student attached to my desk for a year with periodic meeting. I was a mechanical designer in my past life in automotive industry. I tryed to taught my best the "tricks" of the industry business, first by taking his drawing and put several cross on the non mechanicaly possible part to engine. After some months he produced nice tool prototypes and progressively we choose one to be applied on the machine for longer tests. The student selected with some advices his own components, suppliers, discussed prices, ringed them to arrange meetings. I really enjoyed to work with him.
Then come the big day of the audition of the student with a Powerpoint presentation and a jury. I previously met his referent teacher who was the literrature teacher totally enjoyed by industry (maybe she missed her way) and then saw the head of jury at the end of the classroon. That was my university department head while I was myself a university student a decade earlier... that was really surprising.
The student's hand were shaking while demonstrating, that was cute. Fortunaly he revived his mind and mastered the presentation of the project he worked on for a year. At the end of the presentation was deliberation, and the department head asked me "What do you think about ?" and I replied "From all the guy you will see demonstrating their work during this audition week, he's the only one that next monday can be hired by a company and operationnal". He looked at the litterature teacher and asked her how was his year ratings, she replied that this was average. He looked back at me and said "A+, graduated".
When the student heard his "A+" he was screaming inside. He brought me and a teammate to a beertender for drinks. Don't know what the student is doing now as I didn't keep the contact, but that was really a pleasant feeling to see that history repeats from time to time...
THE ART OF ANIME Cultural Exhibition
HD video trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS51tjKlhB0
Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/theartofanime
HD video trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QS51tjKlhB0
Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/theartofanime
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pixie_princess
- Kamisama - God
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sensei
- Moderator and Admin-in-waiting
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Yes, it's a good feeling. I'm always happy to feel that the people who pass by me in classes do get somewhere they wanted to go, and that I helped somewhat. It was one of the disheartening facts of teaching at my campus, though, that there was so little contact between students and faculty after a class was concluded (because they'd go two years there, and then transfer somewhere else). One frankly had no reason to believe that the effort put into a course actally had any lasting effect, besides generating a grade and a gen.ed credit on one side and a three-digit number that represented the student assessment of the quality of our teaching on the other.
We taught as if it really was important. Given our commitment to the profession, it was almost an act of faith, though. Many semesters I would look up from a stack of papers and ask whether I was actually doing something worth doing, or just writing with my finger in sand. Five years from now, would any of this matter?
It's an odd delight to learn that, on one occasion, it did. Though the total random chance way in which I learned this was itself eerie.
But in this world, Yuuko Ishihara reminds us, there is no chance...
We taught as if it really was important. Given our commitment to the profession, it was almost an act of faith, though. Many semesters I would look up from a stack of papers and ask whether I was actually doing something worth doing, or just writing with my finger in sand. Five years from now, would any of this matter?
It's an odd delight to learn that, on one occasion, it did. Though the total random chance way in which I learned this was itself eerie.
But in this world, Yuuko Ishihara reminds us, there is no chance...
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sensei
- Moderator and Admin-in-waiting
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Good to hear from you, Snakie. Are you busy helping the Burmese pythons eat their way through the Everglades? It would be great to hear more from you on Beta from time to time. Your influence goes on: I still have a weekly look at what's up on Rayearth and lately I've even been looking closely at the Angelic Layer auctions!
Hope your photo career is starting to move, even a little in this icky economy. My daughter is hanging on as a print journalist, but learning as much as she can about video- and web-based news reporting as fast as she can.
Hugs and Hisses,
S
Hope your photo career is starting to move, even a little in this icky economy. My daughter is hanging on as a print journalist, but learning as much as she can about video- and web-based news reporting as fast as she can.
Hugs and Hisses,
S
Yay! /hugs
Actually in a shocking turn of events (not really...how many times have I moved?) I am now in Seattle and absolutely LOVING it. I've been here for a little over a year, and I've been taking Kung Fu and going back to school for graphic and web design.
I think your daughter has the right idea for sure--it's the same one I had. My skill set was out of date the moment I graduated because the program I was in was not up to date on current industry standards.
As far as cels go...I was trying to remember all the old places to browse and having a really hard time remembering what was what. Then I was looking at all the Slayers cels and sketches, and going "ZOMG WANT" and then realizing I stopped this because I no longer had the money...and I still don't have the money...yet anyway. ^^
I did make my rubberslug gallery public again though and my cels are with me out here. I occasionally find people out here who appreciate them even though they have never collected.
Oh and my e-mail has changed. It's the snakeskii at gmail now instead of aol.
Happy collecting!
Actually in a shocking turn of events (not really...how many times have I moved?) I am now in Seattle and absolutely LOVING it. I've been here for a little over a year, and I've been taking Kung Fu and going back to school for graphic and web design.
I think your daughter has the right idea for sure--it's the same one I had. My skill set was out of date the moment I graduated because the program I was in was not up to date on current industry standards.
As far as cels go...I was trying to remember all the old places to browse and having a really hard time remembering what was what. Then I was looking at all the Slayers cels and sketches, and going "ZOMG WANT" and then realizing I stopped this because I no longer had the money...and I still don't have the money...yet anyway. ^^
I did make my rubberslug gallery public again though and my cels are with me out here. I occasionally find people out here who appreciate them even though they have never collected.
Oh and my e-mail has changed. It's the snakeskii at gmail now instead of aol.
Happy collecting!