I seem to be in a reminiscing mode. It is just now occurring to me how long I have been here in Durango. I moved here in August of 99 to attend Fort Lewis College and have not as of yet seriously considered moving away.
On my way to work this morning I was looking at my bag that I use to carry my laptop and just about everything else to work and realized that the bag, a little green fabric briefcase type thing, has been used almost every day since my first day as a freshmen in High school. 10 Years!! and I still use it every day!! I remember walking in to my first class,
Mr. Maddux’s freshmen English class. I remember walking into class and sitting for at least 5 min without a word being said, Mr. Maddux sitting in front of the class just staring at us, nobody talking. Suddenly he says “How many of you are Freshmen?” Every single one of us raises their hand, Maddux giggles a little bit. Over the course of the year he continues to ask that question until at the end of the year when finally nobody raised their hand. It was a joke that he played on us almost every day, and every day someone would still raise their hand. I’m not sure if it was intentional but there was quite a lesson in that joke, you are what you want to be, and don’t blindly answer any question. At least that what I took from it thinking back ten years later.
It is amazing to me how little credit those teachers get, Mr. Maddux was definitely one of the best Teacher\Professors I have ever had. I made sure that I had at least a T.A. period with him every year in high school. He and a few other teachers from high school that I remember (
Mr. Kahn (Digital Imaging),
Mr. Mulic (Biology),
Mr. Mathews (Physics),
Mrs. Amendola (Chemistry)) Were by far the most influential on my life and where I am at the moment. Bill Kahn and Chris Maddux got me way more interested in computers than I ever was before, they showed me that I had a talent for running them and using them to their full potential. In Mr. Kahn’s Digital Imaging class I learned the fine art of Photoshop which landed me my first job here in Durango as a digital restoration artist, one of the few areas I can truly call myself and artist (the other is programming, but that takes some explanation to call it an art, but it is for me.) Charlie Mathews and Ed Mulic showed me what it is like to absolutely love what you do. Mr. Mathews Physics classes absolutely blew me away, he made them fun to go to. Not only would he tell you that Potassium has a very energetic chemical reaction with water but he would show you by throwing a chunk into a bucket just to watch it explode. To this day I’m sure there are still burn marks in the ceiling. He let my friends and I just run wild with our curiosity in the physics lab (giant magnets and mirrors and strobe lights to play with.) Mr. Mulic was the first to bust me sleeping in class, and call me out on the learning by osmoses joke/excuse. He took our class to the Human Cadaver Lab at the University of Utah. That was definitely one of my most memorable moments in high school (well other than things like the prom and afterward.) Mrs. Amendola simply gave me the confidence in myself to believe that I can do anything. She understood the boredom of sitting through class as things get explained for the third time. She unofficially gave me permission to ditch class because she would rather I wasn’t there at all than sleeping in the back (it was the first period of the day and if I brought her coffee she didn’t count me absent. I think I only brought cofee once, I had alot of absences in her class.) She understood how I learned as an individual and catered to it, that changed my perception of school forever.
It has been a long time since then and a lot has changed in my life but one thing I can say is, I would not be where I am today if it were not for them.
This is my official Thank you!!
