Second in the List of Least Favorite Teachers: Mr. McMillan

    What have we learned so far? That my 7th grade teacher for a quarter who gave me a C (I earned the mediocre 2.0 grade, sure) for terrible, non-pertinent home work that I failed to complete was a hypocrite and misguided, i.e. dumb, and I should have bitten the bullet and done the stupid word problems about counting calories per fictional cases of people according to the Weight Watcher's system of losing weight, the thing that this same teacher could not seem to do for herself. Projection much? 

    The C "that I earned" hurt my ego. I did not think of myself as a bonehead C student. But there it was. Luckily it combined with a B+ or so in the computer class with the Vice Principal Mrs. Walsh, so for the semester it combined for a B or B-, but still, a mark of sub-standard ratings. Was this me? A "C" for Clinch. Ugh. I knew I was smarter than that. This was a chink in my mental, or intellectual armor.

    I thought of myself as an A student, with some occasional Bs.

    I made it through the next couple years okay, but then some teachers began to wear on me. Education.

      8th grade and 9th grades were not that bad. No baddies. Two more least favorite teachers made it for my sophomore year, however. And perhaps my motivation for scoring high and memorizing less interesting things was really starting to wane. Things that in the present have vexed me in the last year, half-way into my 50s. These are patterns that I recognize. Patterns and problems that I have not conquered in full, and that have led to my own issues in success and prosperity. Even now. That is why I write this. The seeds of doubt and struggle go back.

    To chronicle my life's impurities. My bugaboos. My drawbacks and limitations. I disliked them, these least favorite teachers, because I was not stronger, not better, not more clever: to counter the blahs and braggadociousness of this windbag of a high school teacher, in this case, a health teacher with his own biased and less than pertinent agenda and maniacal ravings.

    It was luckily only one semester, which was required. "Health." We had a textbook, which I wished we had cracked open at and shared as a class at least a little bit, day after day, week after week.

    This guy, I think his name was Jim, was shorter, and sort of soft and pudgy, and had chipmunk cheeks. He has a beautiful daughter about a year older than me named Heather. Poor thing. He was such a blow hard! He would bloviate ad nauseum all the time, and rarely got input from the rest of us. I do not think he was good at eliciting interaction or proper responses. I know now his teaching style was severely lacking. He used us as punching bags and some kind of odd daily therapy as he was the wind bag.

    I may remember it way wrong, but he was an awful bore most of the time; he did not share much of the given material and simply waxed effusive on his own thoughts. Many of his thoughts were as vacuous and obtuse as his teaching curriculum.

    Were we his therapy guinea pigs? Maybe.

    I got a B in the course. I learned less.

    I sat next to Jonathan Hill, a church and Scout friend, who would eventually be my co-brother-in-law with whom I would share five nieces. His brother married my sister about five years later, after one of our few classes together while we shared schools from 8th to 10th grade. But Jonny would move with his family the following summer, and all of us would continue in our life pursuits. Jonathan was smart and better at math, and most likely thinking out logical processes in computers and science than me.

    Most of my friends were better at math than me. Some concepts were harder to grasp or incorporate than others. Newer principles and techniques came, at times, relentlessly. Newer ways to solve for x, to plot y. There was always another method and technique to go to, which I was willing to work on and plod through, but sometimes I needed extra questions and understanding, a simpler practice of the work instead of the "gotcha math" that I have bemoaned about before.

    But, all these years later, there are similar ways that I see I may the one at fault. I have the slowness or poor ability to pick up on the tricks and techniques of manipulating data. Yeah. Not great, me.

    I am speaking a lot about mathematics here while sharing about health and some anatomy, which we were supposed to tackle with Jim McMillan. At least a small portion of his daily class was used up by a little of the daily announcements. From the rather oafish voice of the southern Hoosier guy, but able enough to speak on our school intercom.

    Yes, I thought that I was superior to a lot of those adults that I was surrounded and affected by, but I had large chinks in my armor, for sure.

    And later in the day of that sophomore year was Geometry with Mrs. Kinzer. Perhaps the cementing of my resentment to the scientific ways of assembling logic and amassing the methodical processes of arriving at the "right" answers through tried-and-true operations. Techniques that are good, but can prove as challenging.

    Well, these musings these many decades later may shed some light on me, and life then, and how things play out, or have continued over the years. At least we have a bit of perspective and reminiscence, a small erstwhile post operational analysis of my and others' woes and trials.

    Thus, the chipmunk prof, ersatz thinker and mentor Jim McMillan. He was the one who would dress up as the foolish mascot, maybe, at our rallies. But there was Mr. Marsh, too. He, at least, was a better influence on me a year later. More my style. I guess.

    Hurrah. Go South.

    Happy me.

    I am not cynical (completely).  I am not hopeless. Wary and a bit jaded, or bitter, sure. But, I am reviewing and complaining, taking stock of my brain, behavior, and observations over time.

    Blog. It. 

    (I wrote a similar period-entered phrase a few Fridays ago on a group chat. More on that, perhaps, later.)