[snip]
What a pity that you never encountered a master.[snip]
Probably the closest I ever came was my computer genius friend.
When we worked at IBM, there was a person who was even more genius -- he had been a truck driver delivering stuff to an IBM plant, and somehow he took a programmer aptitude test, and, by the time I knew him, the man came to work when he wanted (which was not 5 days a week), and he had made himself into a kind of living legend by rewriting some production program that ran 24 hours so that it ran in more like 24 minutes -- and he did this kind of thing over and over. He also raised giant rabbits and made great rabbit stew, and grew vegetables in his garden....
Anyway, my friend would follow this guy around and do anything the man might ask him to do. The two would go out drinking, and my friend would write down the ideas the guy had but wouldn't remember the next morning.
But, in all fairness, there was a "catch": my friend had enough sense of self-responsibility to only follow this guy because the guy kept proving himself worthy of being followed. In other words, the student was judging the teacher even while learning from him. (I think this is desirable, of course.)
No, I never had such an experience. The closest I came was my dissertation advisor who is indeed a highly erudite person, and who gave me some very halpful pointers (like to read Elizabeth Eisenstein...), but we never had a really close mentoring / dialectical (Socratic, etc.) relation.
I have made what I can out of a little (and maybe what I have made from that little is more than just a little?). But I also know I am not capable of making something from nothing (the most important nothing being my childrearing and "preparatory" schooling).
I love to teach, especially when I have mastered the subject matter, so that I need no lesson plan, but "just" engage spontaneously with "whatever arises" (that may be how you teach?). But I could not imagine being a school teacher (I don't have the "credential", anyway, so nobody need worry about that possibility)....
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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