Getting High

I get high from teaching. After a lecture, my mind is racing, I feel light--almost rising out of my sneakers--and that thrill comes from having seen, in even just one student, the face of a person learning something new, something that perhaps they never imagined. I walk faster, I feel happier and my mind, after a lecture, is at its most active, linking previously-unlinked ideas. The few minutes o f walking from the lecture hall back to my office is a critical time! A lot happens then. This high can last for a few hours. This is my 11th year of teaching, and I am realizing that the only way I can keep up engaging my students is to keep myself engaged, with new overheads and new evidence--some of which knocks out old ideas, other of which supports older ideas. I am a lucky, lucky man to have found employment doing precisely what I love to do...but to keep it up, I must always incorporate new material, new evidence that keeps me laughing and gasping at its implications...so that I can keep my students laughing, and occasionally gasping, with the joy of unexpected knowledge :)