The Student Is The Teacher Is The Student...

...or something to that effect.

Today was my first day of school. I haven't had a first day of school in over ten years, so this is quite a bizarre experience for me. One would think that after a ridiculous amount of grade school, and a substatiantial amount of time to get a bachelor's degree, that one would be used to the heightened state of panic that accompanies a first day. Not so my friends. I found myself just as apprehensive as I remember being back in Kindergarten. Possibly even more so.

And while I could go into great detail over my first day as a student, I think I'll save the brunt of the experience for another time. For you see, there was an even greater experience I had today that rivaled all others: being an educator, and being taught by another educator.

When you spend a lot of time in a trade, it becomes a habit to study how your colleagues perform. Musicians for example, are always keen to watch the hands of other musicians during a performance. are always watching the hands of other musicians, studying how they play. In fact I would suggest to never watch a music-based movie with a musician in the room. We can spot it when the actor with the guitar is just "faking it" and make a habit of calling it out every single time. Then there is conversing with other musicians, where dangerous questions often linger. Things will be asked, like your preferences between single coils or humbucklers, or where you sit on the issue of vacuum tubes over solid state equipment, and god help you should you answer wrong.

Writers tend to do the same thing when reading the prose of another fellow writer, and I'm pretty sure cooks do it to other cooks as well. So of course, being someone who does all of these things anyways, I'm naturally going to be in study mode when another teacher walks in a room.

The downside to this mentality is that any mistakes that happen are going to attract your attention the way a park and a pile of drums attracts the hippies. From the moment my teacher presented themselves, Every slip of the tongue, every stutter and mumble, every second that class got slowed down by unnecessary crap, I saw. And I'm not the type of person who lets things like this slide easily either. There were a few moments where I wanted to jump up, grab the dry marker from her hand and say "YOU SHUT UP!! THESE PEOPLE PAID A LOT OF MONEY TO LEARN THIS SHIT, AND YOU'RE CONFUSING THE PISS OUT OF ALL OF US!! NOW SIT DOWN AND WATCH HOW THIS WORKS!" And I would've taught the class. Despite not knowing anything about the subject matter, I would have found a way to get a point across. I'm not sure it would've been the right point, but it would be a point nonetheless.

Now, I'm not going to dare say I'm Mr. Teacher extraordinaire. Chances are good I do a lot of very bad things when I conduct a class, and there is probably an aircraft hanger's worth of room available for improvement. But I feel good about the folks I teach. I manage to keep a group of people interested in the subject matter for several hours, and they walk out looking pretty confident about things. So, I'm not the best by any means, but I do alright.

Plus, this is new subject matter to me. I'm already walking into this kind of nervous. I want a teacher who's gonna strut into the room, talk her shit like she's fucking god, and pump me up so high with adrenaline, that I'll sucker punch the door if asked. I want someone who's gonna stand in front of me and say, "YOU WILL LEARN THIS AND LOVE EVERY SECOND OF IT!" So I can sit there all wide-eyed and sparkly, screaming "FUCK YEAH I WILL!" And to my disappointment, I didn't have that moment today.

Again, maybe the standards are too high. Maybe years of doing this sort of thing have set a pair of horse blinders over these aging eyes. Maybe I'm even a little biased, I don't know. But if anything, I suppose this will teach me to take other forms of educating into consideration. This teacher may eventually knock my socks of and drop a ton of fantastic knowledge, so long as I keep my mind open to the prospect.

And if not? Oh well. At least I can go to bed at night knowing I'm a fucktastic educator, even if I'm the only one who believes it.