My Least Favorite Teachers and Mentors - Do They Matter?

    I was thinking of some people that were not good for me, which means I was not the right fit for them, which may only mean I was not good enough as an individual, therefore I may be the biggest part of the failing equation of these assessments of the following. These reflections might be a bigger representation of how I am the one to be blamed or at fault for not being the right guy. Had I been savvier, smarter, more diligent--better-- perhaps the people that I am thinking of would not be so negative to me.

    A matter of perspective.

    7th Grade. Mrs. Graebe. What was her first name? Linda? Betty? Judy?

    10th Grade. Mr. McMillan. What a blowhard.

    10th Grade. Mrs. Kinzer. Okay at teaching. Alcohol on her breath at school, not cool.

    11th Grade. Mr. Gurley. I knew his first name. Check my blog for that. (I later remembered Wayne) Right?

    12th Grade. Mr. Lumbley. This was more on me than him. Great teacher, for most.

    Was there someone in Chile? A companion, a leader? Each has their quirks, but nothing too bad.

    1990, 1991, 1994, 2005. Hilda Rojas would get frustrated with my rustic Chilean Spanish, sometimes just wrong. I called her husband, the scholar and poet, "astute". Does not apply in Spanish, for him, turns out. Maybe Satan. Or Stalin or Franco. Whoops.

    The rest of the 1990s. Maybe that computer teacher? Or Hoyt-Okada from Indianapolis? Hmmm. Was there a boss or teacher in Utah that was bad? Nah, it was usually me coming up short, 1993-1997. I flipped the decade. Then me in California in 1999. The teacher years.

    Enter the 21st century! Who was bad, or who was I no good to?

    Mike Bell, the geography professor. Yeah, a blow hard. Knows a lot. Does not amount to my style, nor did he think I was much.

    The last few years, there were some here and there, in Virginia, in Afghanistan, in Kuwait. The names should not be mentioned. Still too current.

    DHS Guy, CBarrel Gal, HotClosetDude, and maybe CheeseHeadMan. Although, to be fair, the last one mentioned never was mean or dispiriting. So, it was more about me. However, it could be a least favorite.

    Sure, the more that I think about this--all these people that I did not like--I come to the clearer realization that it was about me, the negative part of the equation. I was the least common denominator in the fraction of what I was so frustrated and upset about. They were bringing out some of the worst of me because I was the one who was worse.

    Over time, it plays out. Had I been better, these people would not have dragged me down as I thought that they did. It was me. Sometimes it takes many years to see the reality of things.

    Many of those self-doubts were true. Many of the fallacies or false thinking that I had thought, perhaps too much, in blaming others, was really on me. I was to blame, limited by my constraints, poor habits, poor efforts, both lack of ability, or talent, but worse still, lack of perspicacity and diligence, or resiliency, to get the job done, Time after time.

    It's me. Not so much them. They were reacting, or behaving, according to how I was. Not meeting the mark, not trying or doing enough. Even not being enough.

    I think I need to break these people down post by post.

    Least favorite # 1. Mrs. Graebe. Oh, that C was not me, but it was me.