Thinking Thursday-- The Professor

So I was going to write about my mother, cause seriously who is more influential in a persons life than the people that raise you.

BUT...

I am learning that this isn't a post I can just write up off the top of my head, I am going to have to give this some thought.

SO...

I choose someone else who has been an influence in my life, but not so much that I can't write something quick about them.


I had a professor at college and he was one of the best/worst teachers I ever had.

I may have cried out of anger in his class and I am SURE I was that girl that when I rose my hand or made a comment the other kids would groan.  Yes, I was that student in class.

Anyway.  The reason this professor changed my life is because he made me question everything I had ever been taught.

He taught that progression was bad. It was really the first time I ever wondered about that.  I had always been taught that we want to progress, get better, get healthier, get more.  He said all of that was wrong.  He wanted things to go back to the Amish way of life if not the cave man days, But on the other hand he liked inflation.  He was really a strange man.  

I was an 'older' student when I took his class.  I had gone to about four different colleges (but never getting an associates I was still considered an underclassman cause so few of my credits transferred) and had been married for a year when I took his class, which was full of upper class-men taking it to just finish school, freshmen who were just entering college, or the stoners knowing they could pass his class - I am guessing-because he was smoking it up with them on the weekends..

I learned from his class that I needed to really question some basic things I had been taught and seek some more answers for myself.  I have never been afraid to speak up (or against) teachers whom I thought were dead wrong, but in this class I took it to a new level.

I may or may not have said -ok, kind of yelled-  in class once "Does anyone else think what he is teaching us is total crap?"  I think at least 2/3 of the class was asleep or ignoring him, cause no one really said anything after I said that, but the atmosphere changed and the teacher just shook his head and said "It's ok, just calm down."

I was in two clubs that he was in charge of and was taking another class of his, so we knew each other pretty well and he wasn't offended.

There were a lot of other times when I just had to question what in the world is he teaching us and are these other students thinking he is right?  I felt I needed to say something, to let the other students know it was OK to think differently and to question this (any) professor-- I am not sure if any of the other students even cared as much as I did, but I felt it was my duty to speak up.

And so while I only knew him for about a year (he was fired/quit after during his review with the school board he yelled at them and swept everything off the desk)-- I will always remember the lessons I learned in his classroom, even if they weren't the ones he was teaching.