Tag: teacher

January 23, 1998.  An almost perfect Friday. (#161)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 3 Comments

In the winter of 1998, I began every school day with my internship in Mr. Gibson’s class at Jeromeville High School.  I was starting to feel like I was learning more about what not to do when I was a teacher someday.  Jeromeville was a university town, the locals placed a high value on education, and parents often bought their students fancy, expensive graphing calculators for math class.  The predominant model at the time was the Texas Instruments TI-82.  In those days, the Internet was emerging as a mainstream technology, and the kids all knew either how to download games onto their graphing calculators or copy games from their friends’ calculators.  Mr. Gibson’s teaching style was lecture-based and kind of dry, and half the class was tuned out, playing games on their calculators.  That just made me sad.  I thought about telling this to Mr. Gibson, but as a 21-year-old undergraduate intern, I did not feel right questioning a veteran teacher on his teaching style.

 As I was leaving, I passed by Jeromeville High students on their way from first to second period.  I saw a familiar slim brown-haired girl with glasses approaching; she was a senior named Sasha Travis, and she and her family went to my church.  I usually saw her in passing as I was leaving the high school after Mr. Gibson’s class, and I knew her well enough to wave and say hi.

“Hey, Greg!” Sasha exclaimed.  “How are you?”

“Pretty good.  Glad it’s Friday.”

“Me too!  Have a good weekend!”

“Thanks!  You too!”

I went straight to the university campus after I left Jeromeville High, as I always did.  I parked my bike near the Memorial Union and walked inside.  With almost an hour before my next class, I had time for one of my favorite daily rituals: reading the school newspaper, the Daily Colt.  At some point in my childhood, I started reading the local newspaper regularly every day, and I have done that ever since.  Jeromeville has a local newspaper, but my roommates subscribed to the nearby big-city newspaper, the Capital City Record, before I had any input into the issue, so these days I read the Record every morning before I leave the house.  That was how I got most of my news on the major issues of the day.  Then at some point during a break between classes, I would read the Daily Colt to get campus and local Jeromeville news.

I did not always read every story; I skimmed or outright ignored the ones that were less interesting.  I saw a story buried on page five about some plant pathology professor who had won some award, which I was about to skip until I noticed the by-line under the headline: “BY SADIE ROWLAND, COLT CAMPUS WRITER.”  Sadie was my friend, so I always read her articles.  I might see her tonight at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and if I told her I read her article, maybe she would like that.  It would give me something to say to her, at least.

After I read Sadie’s article, I found Joseph Tomlinson‘s weekly column. The Daily Colt was published Monday through Friday, and each of the five days of the week featured a different student columnist.  Typically two of them wrote about political issues, one from a liberal perspective and one from a conservative perspective, and the other three just wrote about their lives as students at the University of Jeromeville.  Joseph Tomlinson was in his second year of being the conservative columnist, and his column this week was on Jeromeville’s obsession with “small-town feel.”

The Jeromeville City Council had a distinct anti-corporate bias in those days, which is still the case today.  A running joke among Jeromevillians was that one cannot buy underwear in Jeromeville.  The local leaders believed that large chain department stores did not belong in a small town like Jeromeville.  While I saw the value in supporting small, locally owned businesses, I was hesitant to support government interference in the free market.  Also, this position was built on false pretenses to begin with, because whatever it was once, Jeromeville was not a small town anymore.  Sixty thousand people lived in the city limits, and another eight thousand lived on campus just outside the city limits.  And with no clothing stores in Jeromeville, people had to drive eight miles north to Woodville or twenty miles east to Capital City to shop, putting more pollution in the air.  The chain stores all went to Woodville instead, even though Woodville had only three-fourths the population of Jeromeville.

Recently, the corporate chains won a rare victory in Jeromeville with the opening of Borders Books.  This upset many people, but a bookstore was classy enough that it did not anger Jeromevillians as much as something like Walmart would have.  Joseph Tomlinson pointed out in his column that one of the City Council members owned a bookstore, so he should have recused himself from votes related to Borders because of a conflict of interest.  I agreed.  “Vote no on Small Town Feel,” Tomlinson concluded.  “Small Town Feel violates the American concept of freedom.”  I always do, Mr. Tomlinson.  I always do.


On Friday nights, I attended the large group meetings of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, back on campus.  When I arrived that night, I found an empty seat and sat down.  A guy with bushy blond hair wearing a collared shirt, slacks, and a flat gray driver cap sat next to me a few minutes later.  I had seen this guy around JCF before; he always stood out to me because he was more well-dressed than the typical university student, and because he wore cool hats.  “Hey,” I said as he sat down.  His name tag said “Jed.”

“Hi,” Jed replied.  “What’s up?”

“Not much.  Just glad it’s the weekend.”

“I know!  What was your name again?”

“Greg,” I said.  Then I pointed to his name tag and asked, “Jed?  I know I’ve seen you around before.”

“Yeah.  Jed.  It’s nice to meet you.” Jed shook my hand.  “What year are you?”

“I’m a senior.  You?”

“Freshman.”

“They’re starting, so we should probably be quiet,” I said in a loud whisper as I heard the worship team start playing. “But It was nice to meet you.”

“You too!” Jed replied.

As I stood and sang along to the music, I turned around and saw that, while I had been talking to Jed, Sadie Rowland had arrived, sitting in the row behind me.  I smiled and waved, and she waved back.

An hour and a half later, after the talk and more worship music, I still had no plans for afterward.  I was about to ask Jed if he was doing anything, but he spoke first.  “I need to get going,” he said.  “I’ll see you next week?”

“Sure,” I replied.  “Have a good weekend!”

I turned around, hoping that Sadie was still sitting behind me; she was.  “Hey,” I said.

“Hi, Greg!  How are you?” Sadie asked.

“Good.  Just been busy with school.  How are you?”

“Same.  I had a paper due today.  I finished it at the last minute.”

“You finished it.  That’s what’s important.”

“Right?”

“Hey.  I saw your article in the Daily Colt today, about that professor who won the award.  It was good.”

“Thanks!” Sadie replied.  “It was interesting researching and writing that story, but I’m hoping to get moved to local politics next year.  That’s really what I want to write.”

“I know.  They need a conservative voice on the Colt, even though they probably don’t want one.”

“Yeah, really.”

“I guess they have Joseph Tomlinson, but he’s just a columnist, not a reporter.”

“Joseph Tomlinson is great!”

“Yes!” I agreed.  “He’s hilarious, and insightful too.  I loved his column today on Small Town Feel.  Jeromeville can be pretty ridiculous.”

“I know!  You’ve been here two years longer than I have, so I’m sure you’ve seen more of the Jeromeville ridiculousness.”

“Definitely.  Like the ‘historic’ muddy alleys where mosquitoes breed, but they won’t pave them because of the neighborhood’s historic character.”

“Wow,” Sadie said, rolling her eyes.

“And you know about the frog tunnel, right?”

“Yeah.  That’s so weird.”

“I know.  One City Councilmember was quoted as saying she wanted to build connections to the frog community.”

“Like the frogs have any idea what’s going on,” Sadie added.  “But, yeah, the media is so biased.  The newspaper back home keeps calling our house trying to get us to subscribe, and my dad is like, ‘Stop calling me.  I don’t want to read your Commie trash.’”

I laughed.  “That’s a good one.  I should try something like that next time someone calls me trying to sell me something.”

“That would be funny.”

“Yeah.  So how was your week?  What else did you do?”

“We had Bible study yesterday.”

“Nice,” I said.  “My Bible study is huge.  We do a few worship songs together, then we split into three groups to do the actual study part.  We come back together for prayer requests at the end.”

“Which one is that?  Who are the leaders?”

“Joe Fox and Lydia Tyler.”

“How big is huge?”

“We average probably between twenty and twenty-five each week.”

“Twenty-five!  That’s too big for a study group like this.  Why is it so big?”

“It’s exactly what I said was going to happen. JCF has moved so much toward groups for specific populations.  You’re in a Kairos group, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Those are handpicked by their leaders, and people like me never get included. And there’s the group for transfer students, and the group for student athletes, and the two groups just for women.  All of us who don’t fit those categories only had one group left to choose from, so that group ended up huge.”

“I don’t think the Kairos ministry is supposed to be about excluding people, but I get what you’re saying,” Sadie observed.

“I’m concerned with the direction JCF is going.  There’s also a group specifically for Filipinos, and I’ve heard someone say that next year they want to make more groups specifically for people from certain cultural backgrounds.  How is that not racist?  Aren’t we supposed to treat each other equally and not be segregated by race?”

“That’s messed up.”

“I know.  Paul said in Galatians that there is no Jew nor Greek, for all are one in Christ Jesus.”

“Exactly!  Maybe you should tell Dave or Janet or one of the leaders your concerns.”

“I have.  Didn’t do any good.”

“That’s too bad.  What are you guys studying?”

I told Sadie that we were going through Romans, and I tried to remember specifically what insights I had that I could share with her.  She told me about her Kairos group and everything that they had learned.  Her group seemed to have the same kind of studies as other groups, but with a specific focus toward preparing student leaders, which was the stated mission of the Kairos ministry.

“You have any exciting plans coming up?” Sadie asked me a bit later.

“Not this weekend.  But in a few weeks, I’m taking the basic skills test I need to get into the teacher training program.  And then I’m going straight from there to meet up with the kids from church at Winter Camp.  I’ll be joining them a day late.”

“Winter Camp sounds fun!  What is this test?”

“It’s required for anyone wanting to be a teacher, or a substitute, or anything like that.  It looks like it’ll be pretty easy.  It’s just meant to show that you have the equivalent of a ninth grade education.”

“Really?  Only ninth grade?”

“Yes.  And a lot of people are complaining that teachers shouldn’t have to take the test.  They say it excludes people who would otherwise be good teachers.”

“How?  How can you be a good teacher without a ninth grade education?”

“I know!  They say it’s racially biased.”

“Of course.  Everything is racially biased these days.”

“If I had kids,” I said, “I wouldn’t care what color skin their teacher had, but I certainly would insist on a teacher who could do ninth grade reading and math.  If you’re a teacher, you need to understand more than just the material you’re teaching.”

“And that’s why you’re gonna be a great teacher.”

“Aww,” I smiled.  “Thank you.”

“We definitely need good teachers.  A lot of my teachers in high school were ready to retire and just there for the paycheck.  And, of course, I had a history teacher who was really liberal.  He and I used to get into arguments all the time.”

“That would have been fun to watch.  I wish I had been in your class to see that.”

Sadie laughed.  “I could have used your support.  I did have one other friend who used to jump into those arguments and take my side.”

“That’s good.  I had a friend kind of like that in history class, but he usually started the argument with our teacher, and I’d join in.  He was kind of annoying, but we had a lot of classes together, and I liked having a conservative friend.”

“Annoying how?”

I told Sadie about Jason Lambert and how he could be kind of loud and argumentative, and also about the time he asked out the girl that I wished I had the guts to ask out.  But I also told her some good things about Jason, like the project we did in Spanish class where I was a bully taking his lunch money.  Jason’s character used a magical growth drink called La Leche de Crecer, at which point we paused the recording and replaced Jason with a six-foot-seven football player, who proceeded to take revenge on my bully character.  Sadie told me about some of her more memorable high school friends, and some of the parties she had gone to with them.  She had a bit more active social life than I did in high school, apparently.

“Hey, did I tell you I’m going to Washington, D.C. for the spring and summer?” Sadie asked after the conversation about high school reached a lull. 

“I don’t think so.  What’s this for?”

“An internship with my Congressman from back home.”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah!  I’ve met him a few times.  My dad volunteered for his campaign.”

“That’ll be good experience for you.  When do you leave?”

“April.  I’ll go home for spring break, then stay there for two weeks, then I’ll be gone until the middle of September.  I’m going on planned leave for spring quarter.”

“That’s exciting!  I’ll miss seeing you around spring quarter.”

“I know!  I’ll miss everyone here.  And I’ll miss Outreach Camp.  I had so much fun there this year.”

“I know.  I have to miss Outreach Camp too, because I will have started student teaching by then.  The school where I’m teaching will start earlier than UJ.”

“Do you know where you’ll be student teaching yet?”

“No, but probably not Jeromeville High.  The professor who runs it says the student population in Jeromeville doesn’t reflect what we’ll see in the average teaching position around here.  Jeromeville families tend to be wealthier and more educated.”

“That makes sense,” Sadie observed.

“Greg, Sadie, time to go, you two,” I heard Tabitha Sasaki’s voice call out from across the room.  I looked up, confused.  The room was empty, except for me and Sadie, and Tabitha, who was carrying the last of the worship band’s equipment toward the door.  I looked at my watch.  Sadie and I had been talking for over an hour, long enough for all of the hundred or so others to go home and the staff and student leaders to put everything away and clean up the room.  And I had not noticed any of this.

“I guess we have to go now,” Sadie said.  “I should get home and go to bed anyway.”

“Did you drive here?  Where’d you park?”

“I’m over in the lot by Marks.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” I said.  I grabbed my Bible, Sadie grabbed hers, and we walked out into the dark but clear night, with no moon and only a few stars visible beyond the streetlights lighting the path we walked.  “You said you just turned in a paper?  Does that mean this will be a relaxing weekend?”

“Unfortunately, no.  I have a midterm Monday.”

“That sucks.  But good luck.”

“Thanks.”

We had arrived at Sadie’s car by that point.  “It was nice talking to you,” I said.

“You too!  I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.”

“Good night, Greg.”

“Good night.”

I walked toward my car, but before I unlocked my car, I watched Sadie drive off.  I got in the car and began the trip home a minute later.

If I could live my university years again, knowing what I know now about life as an adult, I would take more chances.  I would not have wasted this opportunity, getting thoroughly lost in conversation with a cute girl, and walking her to her car, only to watch her drive off without attempting to make some kind of future plans.  I did not know exactly what to do; I was always just trying to be a good Christian and be friends first and not rush into dating.  But this did not work for me, because I did not know what to do once I was friends with a girl.  As a student, I was surrounded by others in more or less the same stage of life as me.  I did not come to realize until my thirties that life would never be like that again.  As I write this in my mid-forties, I have grown apart from many of my friends, and I have found it difficult to meet people and  make new friends.  If I had been able to see the future on that winter day in 1998, if I had known the directions that mine and Sadie’s lives would take, I would have done everything imaginable not to let her just drive away that night.  Things might not have worked out between us, but at least I would have known that I tried my best.

Readers: Tell me in the comments about a night you wish could have ended differently.

I updated the Dramatis Personae. Some of the entries were badly out of date. And Sadie didn’t even have an entry; she was just listed, with no last name, under “Others from JCF.” If anyone is looking for hints of what will happen in the rest of Year 4, it is noteworthy that two characters who were just briefly introduced in this episode now have their own entries already…

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

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January 7-8, 1998.  A silly new word for a new quarter. (#159)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 5 Comments

For reasons I would never find out, whoever was in charge of scheduling at the University of Jeromeville did something different for the winter and spring quarters of 1998.  Winter classes began on a Wednesday instead of the usual Monday.  I did not have a problem with that, but pushing everything back two days like that had a ripple effect on the rest of the academic year, leading to a very annoyingly inconvenient schedule for spring break and spring quarter.  But that is a story for another time.

I had to get up early five days a week now for a class at eight in the morning, but the class was not on the UJ campus.  I locked my bike in the bike parking at Jeromeville High School, which was much larger than the bike parking I had ever seen at any other suburban school.  Jeromeville touted itself as a bicycle-friendly community, and this local culture trickled down to all ages.  I walked to room E-3; I knew my way around the E building, where the mathematics classes were, because I had done this same thing before last year, only with a different supervising professor back at UJ.  I arrived about ten minutes before the scheduled time for class; the door was open, and a few students were sitting in desks, talking.  A middle-aged man with graying brown hair and a mustache sat at the teacher desk.  He was of averageheight, slightly on the heavy side, with graying brown hair and a mustache.  He wore a dress shirt with a tie.

“Is this geometry, with Mr. Gibson?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Greg, the intern from UJ.”

“Yes!  Greg!  Nice to meet you.”  Mr. Gibson shook my hand.

“So what should I do?”

“For today, you can just sit in the back and watch how things work in class.  If you feel ready, you can start walking around and helping students at the end of the period when they start homework.”

“Sounds good!”

After the bell rang, Mr. Gibson read the morning bulletin to the class.  “If you look in the back of the room, you will notice someone new with us,” he announced.  “This is Greg.  He’s a student at UJ, he’s studying to be a math teacher, and he’ll be helping out in our class for the next few months.”  I waved as the students in the class turned around to look at me.

As Mr. Gibson began his lecture, explaining relationships between angles when two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, I looked around the classroom.  Many of these students looked bored.  Mr. Gibson was standing at the front of the room lecturing, and some students were occasionally copying things from his lecture into their notebooks.  I took some notes of my own while Mr. Gibson lectured, but instead of writing down theorems about parallel lines and angles, I wrote my thoughts on Mr. Gibson’s teaching style and how students responded.

I had done an internship like this the previous school year, in Mr. O’Rourke’s precalculus class.  My professor of record last time was Dr. Samuels of the mathematics department, and this internship was set up through Dr. Van Zandt of the education department, so it would show up on my transcript as Education 197 instead of Mathematics 197.  I was told that this internship would essentially be the same thing, although I could see a few subtle differences in the classes themselves already from the first day.  Mr. Gibson’s lecturing style seemed more bland to me than that of Mr. O’Rourke, who was funny and had more interaction with students.  Mr. O’Rourke was older than Mr. Gibson, but he did not fit the stereotype of older teachers being boring.  Also, typically only college-bound students took precalculus.  A geometry class had a mix of college-bound younger students and upperclassmen who were behind grade level in math.  The best students that Jeromeville High had to offer would never even be in this geometry class.  They would have finished geometry before even getting to high school, two grade levels above state standards.  That option, apparently commonplace in a university town like Jeromeville, was never available to me growing up in working-class Plumdale.

Students began their homework with about fifteen minutes left in the period.  Mr. Gibson addressed me at this time.  “You can walk around answering students’ questions,” he said.

“I’ll do that,” I replied.  I began circulating up and down the rows of desks, watching to see what students were writing.  I did not engage any of them in conversations yet, although I thought about doing this sometime soon after I was more comfortable in this new position.

At one point, one of the students raised his hand as I walked by.  “Hey, can you help me with this?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied.  I looked at the top of his paper, where he had written his name.  “Matt,” I replied.  “I don’t know everyone’s name yet.  What was your question?”

“This one,” Matt said, pointing at a diagram with two parallel lines labeled l and m.  A third line labeled p intersected both lines, with the acute angle between p and m labeled 37 degrees.  The question asked to find the obtuse angle between lines p and l.  “What did you learn about this today?” I asked.

Matt turned back a page in his book and recited from it.  “‘If two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, the alternate interior angles are equal.’”

“The angle you know, and the angle you’re trying to find, are they alternate interior angles?  Look at the diagram.”

“I don’t know.  They don’t look equal.”  Matt studied the diagram.  “I don’t think so.”

“They’re not, because they’re on the same side of line p.  So did you learn something about angles on the same side of the transversal?”

Matt turned back to the page with the theorems on it and continued reciting.  “‘The angles on the same side of the transversal are supplementary.”

“Are those angles on the same side of the transversal?”

Matt looked at the problem again.  “Yeah.”

“And what does supplementary mean?”

“Isn’t it, like, the angles add to 90, or 180, or something like that?”

“Yes.  180.”

“So to find the angle, I would do 180 minus 37?”

“Exactly.  Good job.”

As I continued walking around the room, it occurred to me that maybe I should have asked Matt to look up the definition of supplementary himself.  But I think that was a positive interaction.  Matt figured out most of the problem himself.

After the bell rang, Mr. Gibson asked me, “So what did you think?”

“It was good,” I said.  “It’ll be good to see your teaching style and compare it to others I’ve seen.”

“Have you worked in a class here at Jeromeville High before?”

“Yeah.  Last year, with Mr. O’Rourke.”

“I’m a little different from him.  He’s good, though.”

“It’ll be good seeing a different perspective.”


I rode my bike from the high school to the Memorial Union on campus, a distance of about a mile.  I arrived a little after nine, giving me almost an hour until my next class.  I had no homework yet on the first day of classes, so I grabbed a copy of the Daily Colt, found an empty seat, and read.  My friend Eddie Baker was a writer for the Daily Colt, and he had written a fluff piece in today’s issue about made-up slang words and what some would call the butchering of the English language.  My eyes landed on a pull quote in the middle of the article, in bold font and slightly larger printing:

“I have a roommate who always says ‘buttass.’  It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Jason Costello, senior

I laughed out loud.  Buttass.  That was hilarious.  Something clicked in my brain after a few seconds.  I knew Jason Costello; he was one of Eddie’s roommates in that big house on De Anza Drive.  I knew all of their other housemates too: Ramon, Lars, John, and Xander.  I had never heard any of them say “buttass.”   It was probably Lars. “Buttass” totally sounded like a Lars thing.

After skimming the rest of the articles, I folded the paper over so that the crossword puzzle was showing.  I finished it in about ten minutes, so I tore the puzzle out and put it in my backpack to put up on my wall back home later, next to the other puzzles I had finished.  Today’s puzzle seemed fairly easy, compared to others I had done.  Buttass easy, I thought, giggling to myself.

My next class was Mathematics 150B, Introduction to Abstract Algebra.  This class was a continuation of 150A from last quarter, except that the same professor did not teach it.  This new professor, Dr. Lisitsa, was a large gray-haired Russian man whom I could understand although English was clearly not his first language.  Many of the same familiar math majors from 150A last quarter were in this class, including Katy Hadley, Jack Chalmers, and Melissa Becker.  Most of 150A was easy, but it had started to get difficult toward the end of the quarter, so I was a little apprehensive about this class.  By the end of the first day, though, I was still following along with everything just fine.

After Abstract Algebra, I felt like a change of scenery, so instead of going back to the Memorial Union, I walked to the library.  The library had been expanded several times in the history of the university, to the point that it had become a rectangular ring with three distinct architectural styles surrounding a courtyard.  Behind what was now, but had not always been, the main entrance, a wall of windows three stories high looked onto the courtyard, with stairways in different directions leading to the basement, second floor, and third floor.  Part of the building had a fourth floor as well, but it was not accessible through these front stairways.

I climbed all the way to the third floor on my left.  I could have used an elevator, but I felt like climbing the stairs.  At the top of the stairs, I turned right toward the back of the building and walked along stacks of books on my left and windows on the right.  The wall was almost two feet thick, and the windows were recessed, flush with the outer wall facing the courtyard.  This created a rectangular cubbyhole-like space in front of each window, about five feet long, where students could sit and study.  I sat parallel to the walkway, with the walkway and book stacks on my left and the window on my right, my legs stretched out as far as they could.  I read through the section of the math book that we started in class today, then began working on homework.  With a three-hour gap between classes, I may as well get an early start on the quarter.

A little after twelve, I was hungry, so I walked back to the MU and got in line for a burrito. I walked to the tables, looking for a place to sit, and found Sarah Winters and Caroline Pearson, whom I had been friends with since the first week of freshman year.  “May I sit here?” I asked, gesturing toward an empty seat at their table.

“Sure!” Sarah said, smiling.

“Hey, Greg,” Caroline added in her Australian accent, slight now after having lived in the United States for a decade, but still noticeable.  “How are your new classes?”

“Good.  I’m TA-ing at Jeromeville High again in the morning.  Then today I had Math 150B, and I have Ed 110 later this afternoon.  Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m TA-ing again, and then Math 131.  Probability.”

“I took 150A and B last year,” Sarah said.  “I thought 150B was kind of hard.  But I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

“You’re a teacher’s assistant at the high school?  Is that for a class?” Caroline asked.

“Yeah,” I said.  “Education 197, for two units.  I did something similar last spring.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that.”

“When is your next class?” Sarah asked.

“Not until two,” I replied.

“Do you have that big gap in your schedule every day?”

“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  It’ll be a good time to get work done.”

“Are you tutoring for the Learning Skills Center, like you did before?” Caroline asked.

“Not this quarter.  I didn’t want to overdo it.”

“Good idea,” Sarah said.  “Now, you can have meet someone for lunch at eleven, and meet someone for lunch at twelve, and meet someone for lunch else at one.”  She smiled.

“Haha.  I guess I can.”  I’d probably run out of people to have lunch with quickly, though, I thought.

“How was your winter break?” Caroline asked.

“It was good.  I made a silly movie with my brother and his friends.  And I went to Valle Luna to see Brian Burr, for his New Year’s party.”

“How is Brian doing?  Where is he now?”

“New York Medical College.  He seems to like it.  What about you?  What did you guys do for your break?”

“Just hung out with family.  We went to the snow for a weekend.”

“Nice!  Sarah?  How was your break?”

“It was good. I had Christmas with family.  Saw a couple of my friends back home.”

“That’s nice.”  I thought about how I did not have friends left back home, except for my brother’s friends Cody and Boz, but I decided not to bring up that topic.


By one o’clock, Caroline and Sarah had both left for class.  I still had another hour free.  This three-hour gap between classes would take some getting used to, but within a few days, the workload would ramp up and I would be buttass busy, with plenty to do.

Today, though, I was done with homework, I had read the Daily Colt, and I had eaten lunch with friends.  I walked south to the Arboretum, which ran for a mile and a half from southwest to northeast along a creek bed which had been filled to become a long, narrow lake.  I sat on a bench amidst trees from all over the world and took out my Bible.  I opened to the back, where there was a plan to read the Bible in one year by reading three passages per day.  I turned to the chapter and verse that was listed for September 15.  I started in January of 1997 with the passages for January 1, but I had fallen behind by a few months at this point, since I only read four or five times per week.  After I read, I prayed.  I thanked God for this beautiful nature area right on campus, and I asked God that I would do well in my classes and not feel overwhelmed.

When two o’clock approached, I walked toward Orton Hall and my Educational Psychology class.  The course catalog listed Psychology 1, which I had not taken, as a prerequisite.  Josh McGraw, one of my housemates, had taken both of these classes, and he did not remember anyone checking to see if everyone had passed Psych 1.  He thought I would be fine without it.  Josh gave me his old textbook for the class too.  After the first day, I was still keeping up with everything.  So far so good.  This was a class based more on reading and writing than mathematics, which was not particularly my strong point, but I had done fine in classes like that before.


The internship in Mr. Gibson’s class was five days a week.  On Thursday morning, the second day of the quarter, it was pouring rain outside.  I took a bus to Jeromeville High School, and later I took a different bus from there to the university, both new bus routes for me.

Lars Ashford was on that second bus I rode after Mr. Gibson’s class.  “Sup,” he said when he saw me.

“Can I sit here?”

“Sure, man.”

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you.  Yesterday in the Daily Colt, I read Eddie’s article about made-up slang words, and Jason said one of his roommates always says ‘buttass.’  Is that you?”

Lars laughed.  “Yeah, dude, that’s me.”

“‘Buttass’ is a great word.  I’m gonna start using it.”

“Sweet.”

I was a little bit intimidated after the first day of probability class.  The professor, Dr. Craig, said from the start that he usually only works with graduate students and does not often teach undergrads.  I got the impression that he thought we were beneath him.  His teaching style was very lecture-based, as seemed to be the case with many professors who only work with upperclassmen and graduate students.  I was following along okay, I would probably do okay, but that kind of teaching style does not work for all students.  I was starting to see that in Mr. Gibson’s class, where some of the students got easily bored.  They needed a more interactive experience, like Dr. Samuels from Euclidean geometry last year.

By the end of the class, though, I felt a little more comfortable.  When Dr. Craig dismissed us, I got up to leave the room, but a guy who was sitting a few desks away walked up to me first.  He said, “You look familiar.  Do you go to U-Life?  Or did you used to?”

I paused, trying to remember if I knew him.  University Life was the college group affiliated with the First Baptist Church of Jeromeville, which was not my church, but I knew some people from there.  “I did a few times last year,” I said.  “I usually go to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, but I was kind of frustrated with them for a while, and I had made some friends at U-Life and they invited me.  Ben Lawton, Alaina Penn, Corinne Holt…”

“The poetry reading!  At Alaina and Corinne’s house!  That’s where I remember you from.  You got up there and said a bunch of math stuff.”

“Yes!  That was me!  I don’t remember your name, though.”

“Mike.”

“I’m Greg.  Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too!”

I shook Mike’s hand, and we made small talk all the way to his next class while I attempted to hold an umbrella in the wind.  It was buttass wet outside.  I was done for the day, so I found a dry spot inside the MU to eat the sandwich I had packed.  When I finished eating, I went to my spot next to the window in the library and did my Bible reading for the day.

The first two days of the quarter were complete.  So far, so good.  Mike from Math 131 seemed like a nice guy; I had to think of him in my mind as “Mike from Math 131,” because I knew so many other Mikes and Michaels and I did not know this Mike’s last name yet.  I was enjoying helping Mr. Gibson’s students so far.  And Ed Psych did not seem too difficult yet, although I was going to have to write a buttass long term paper later in the quarter.  The rain was starting to let up by the time I got off the bus, but I still had to walk a few minutes to my house.  When I got home, I took off my backpack and lay on my bed.  It was time for a nap. I’m tired, I thought to myself. Buttass tired. This was going to become my new favorite word. Of course, some would disapprove of making up new words like this, but that is all part of how language and communication evolve. Some new words bother me, yet I have been known to make up new words myself. It probably has more to do with what the new word is. New words that bother me tend to be related to things I already do not like, whereas new words like “buttass” just make my inner potty-humor-loving child happy.

The tree in the library courtyard would not have been so green in January. I took this photo in 2022 at the Spring Picnic.

Readers: Do you and/or your friends have any buttass silly words that you made up? Tell me about them in the comments!

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October 15-19, 1997.  Trying to figure out if I can graduate in June. (#149)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

The weather in Jeromeville for most of October was typically what I could consider perfect.  Days were sunny, with afternoon temperatures in the 80s, still warm enough to be outside, but the nights were cool, so the days did not get blisteringly hot like they did in July and August.  I was still wearing shorts to class during the third full week of fall quarter, and I had some free time on that Wednesday afternoon, so I sat outside on the Quad.  I brought another book with me to campus in addition to my textbooks, and I was looking through this book when I saw Carrie Valentine walking toward me, coming from the direction of the library and headed toward the flagpole.  I waved, but she was not looking in my direction, so I quickly put my hand down, not wanting to look awkward.  I nervously watched as she approached and waved again when she turned her head toward me.  She stepped off the path and walked toward me.

“Hey, Greg,” Carrie said, smiling.  She put her bag down and sat on the grass facing me.  “Can I hang out here?”

Yes, I thought.  Of course you can.  It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve actually gotten to talk to you, and I’ll never make you fall in love with me if we don’t talk more often.  But all I said out loud was, “Sure.  What’s up?”

“I’m meeting with my Kairos leader,” Carrie explained.  “But I’m early.”

“You’re in Liz’s group, right?”

“Yeah!”

“We were in the same dorm as freshmen.  She was across the hall, one down from me.”

“That’s cool!  Whose Bible study are you in this year?”

“Joe Fox and Lydia Tyler.  The group is so huge, we usually read the Scripture together and then break up into three smaller groups.”

“How big is it?”

“Usually around twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five!  Why so many?”

“Honestly, I think it’s because, with all the Kairos groups, and all the specialized Bible studies for certain groups of people, there was only one group left for all the rest of us.”

“Interesting.  You couldn’t be in a Kairos group?”

“The Kairos ministry is for training future leaders.  You have to be asked to be in a Kairos group, and they don’t invite seniors.  Unless you’re leading a group as a senior and you were in one before, like Liz.”

“I see,” Carrie replied.  “Hmm.”

I decided not to share my exact thoughts about Jeromeville Christian Fellowship’s Kairos ministry, since Carrie was part of a Kairos group.  As I was thinking about what else to say, Carrie broke the silence and asked, “What are you working on?  Is that the course catalog?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I was trying to figure out if it’s possible for me to graduate at the end of this year, what classes I still need to take, stuff like that.”

“That’s exciting!  What are you doing after graduation?”

“I’m going to be a teacher.”

“That’s so cool!”

“I’m still trying to figure out if I’ll do my teacher certification through Jeromeville, or Capital State, or somewhere else.  I know Jeromeville’s program is one year, and it’s only fall through spring.  If I graduate in June, then I’ll be able to do that, but if I don’t graduate until December of ’98, then I’ll either have to wait until the fall of ’99 to start student teaching, or see if anyone has a program where I can start in the winter.”

“I hope you get all that figured out.”

“I got this Graduation Progress Tracker form in the mail last week, I guess they send it to all the seniors.  They list all the graduation requirements and what you’ve done and what you still need.  And I also have some prerequisites for the teacher certification program that I have to be able to fit in.”  I saw a familiar face out of the corner of my eye walk up to the flagpole.  “There’s Liz over there,” I said, pointing.

“Oh, yeah,” Carrie replied.  “I should go.  Good luck figuring that out!  Keep me posted.”

“I will!  Tell Liz I said hi.”  I watched as Carrie got up and walked to the flagpole.  She said something to Liz, who then turned in my direction.  I waved, and both of them waved back.


My new house on Acacia Drive was a quick three minute walk to church, and in addition to Sunday mornings, I was there every Wednesday night as a volunteer with The Edge, the youth group for junior high school students.  Before the students arrived, the leaders met to catch up, go over the events of the upcoming night, and share prayer requests.

“What’s up,” Taylor Santiago said as I approached the group.  I had known Taylor the longest of any of the other Edge leaders; he lived on the floor above me freshman year.  Taylor was also the one who first suggested I get involved with The Edge.

“Not much,” I said.  “I’m just trying to figure out if I can graduate in June.”

“I thought you said you were going to go four years plus one more quarter.”

“I just assumed I had to, with all the math classes I still have to take and the prerequisites for the teacher training program.  But I was looking at stuff earlier, and if I understand correctly, I think I will be able to graduate.  I wanted to take some more of Dr. Hurt’s New Testament classes, but I might have to skip those if I don’t want an extremely full class schedule.  They don’t fulfill any requirements at this point.”

“Have you filed your intent to graduate yet?” Noah Snyder asked, having overheard this entire conversation so far.  Noah was the youth group intern, being paid part time by the church to lead The Edge.

“Not yet,” I replied, “but I want to do that in the next few days.  I just hope I understand everything correctly, and that I don’t get to graduation day and someone tells me that I can’t actually graduate, that I have to take more classes.”

“That won’t happen,” Taylor said.  “I’m pretty sure someone will contact you if you file for graduation and you haven’t met the requirements yet.”

“Kathleen Sutton works with the office that handles all that stuff,” Noah added.  “You could probably ask her to look over your form.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.  Kathleen Sutton was a youth group parent; the Suttons occasionally hosted lunch socials for the church college group at their house. Kathleen’s daughter was in The Edge last year, and she had an older son in high school and a younger son in the preteen youth group.  “When I got that Graduation Progress form, it had a number to call.  I’m sure between that person and Kathleen Sutton, I can get all of this figured out.”

“Are you going to stay at Jeromeville for your teacher certification?” Noah asked.

“If I can, I’d like to.  I know the professor who does math education, and I’d be able to stay here and keep working with The Edge.”

“I’m going to stay in Jeromeville, but commute to Cap State for mine.  It’s cheaper, and it just works out better for me.  They have a really good program for elementary school teachers.  I’m not sure what they’re like for high school teachers, though.”

“If staying in Jeromeville ends up too complicated, I’ll look into Cap State too,” I said.  Capital State University was about twenty miles from Jeromeville on the other side of the Drawbridge, and Noah’s mention of their program being cheaper started to give me doubts about my tentative plan.  However, Mom always told me not to worry about money, that we would find a way to pay for things.  My grandmother had started a college savings account for me when I was very young, and with the academic scholarships I had received, we had hardly had to use that money so far.  I would also have to find a way to pay for school if I stayed at UJ for part of a fifth year as an undergraduate, so I would keep that under consideration if any options that did not include graduating in June were still on the table.


When I got home, I went straight to my backpack, in the large bedroom that I shared with my roommate Sean.  Sean was sitting at his desk typing a paper on his computer; a cluster of helium balloons, including one that said “Happy Birthday” and another that had the number “22” written on it in black marker, was rising from the floor next to him, anchored by a weight at the end of a ribbon a few feet long.

“It’s your birthday?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Sean replied.

“I didn’t know that.  Happy birthday!  Did you do anything fun?”

“I went out to dinner with some friends from the wildlife bio major tonight.  We just got back a little while ago.  And I’m flying home tomorrow to spend the weekend with my family.”

“That’ll be nice,” I said, excited for Sean that he will get to see his family, but also excited that I would have the bedroom to myself all weekend, able to flirt with girls on Internet Relay Chat and not worry about someone looking over my shoulder.

I got out my course catalog and the Graduation Progress form.  I had completed my general education requirements and the classes required for everyone regardless of major.  The only requirement remaining was for the major itself, and I needed three more upper-division mathematics classes, including 150B, the continuation of my current abstract algebra class.  With two quarters left, I had plenty of time to take those.  I was limited in which classes I could take, since not all classes were offered every quarter, or even every year.  But I was sure I could find three that would work with my schedule.  Math 150B was offered every year in the winter, and at this point I did not really care what the other two classes would be.

The tricky part would be preparing for the teacher training program.  In my state, universities do not offer education majors; instead, teacher training is a one year graduate program taken after completing a bachelor’s degree.  I would have to reapply to UJ by the end of November, this time as a graduate student applying to the School of Education.  I was missing three classes for that program’s requirements: Educational Psychology, a lecture class offered by the physical education department called Healthful Living, and one more English class of my choice.  I looked up to see which quarters those classes were offered, and I came up with a plan.  In the winter, I would take Ed Psych, Math 150B, and some other math class that I could fit into my schedule, and in the spring, I would take Healthful Living, one more math class, and Fiction Writing for the English class.  Fiction Writing was a lower-division class, but it sounded the most fun and interesting out of all the English options, and I would still have enough total upper-division units to graduate.  Healthful Living was only a two-unit class, so I would need one more class in the spring in order to be a full-time student.  I would be able to take one more of Dr. Hurt’s New Testament classes after all; he taught Christian Theology in the spring.  For the winter, I would have just barely enough units to be a full-time student, so maybe I could look at doing another two-unit internship tutoring at Jeromeville High School, as I had done last spring.

At that moment, something caught my eye at the bottom of the Graduation Progress Tracker.  A few lines of small print at the bottom informed me of a number to call if I had questions.  Apparently, as fourth-year student, I had been assigned to a specific person, the one who had filled out this form, and that person would process my application to graduate, as well as answer any questions I might have.  The lower left corner of the form said, “Completed by,” with a blank for that person to initial, and in that blank were the handwritten initials “KS.”  I remembered Noah’s words a few hours earlier, telling me that Kathleen Sutton worked in the office that processed these forms.  Could Kathleen Sutton be the “KS” who filled out my form?  Did I just happen to get assigned to the one person in that office whom I knew personally?  How many of these graduation processing specialists were there, and what were the chances of that?  It was probably a coincidence; there were plenty of people in the world with the initials K.S.  I had nothing more to do at this point for graduation planning, and I had finished everything I needed to do for tomorrow’s classes, so I went to bed.


I saw the date on Sunday morning’s newspaper; it was my brother Mark’s birthday, sixteen years old now. I reminded myself to call home this afternoon, although I had already sent him a card with a fart joke on it.

I had not yet turned in my application to graduate.  I was nervous.  What if I was not ready to graduate?  I would apparently have my requirements done by the end of the school year, but what if I was misinterpreting the requirements?  And was I really ready to finish my undergraduate time and move on to the next phase?  A few weeks ago, when I thought I would need another quarter or two to graduate, I was looking forward to staying in Jeromeville longer.  Jeromeville was my home now.  I had a community here.  Advanced mathematics was getting weird and abstract, I did not enjoy it as much as I used to, and I was ready to be done with school.  But filing for graduation would bring closer the inevitable day when I would leave Jeromeville and go out into the world.

All of this was still on my mind when I got to church that morning.  The worship team played a fast song to begin the service, and when they played a slow song later, I sat and prayed about these things.  I asked God to give me peace about my plan to graduate at the end of the year and do my student teaching through UJ.  Send me a sign that this is your will for my life, I asked silently.

God often speaks to me through odd coincidences.  Some people have told me that I pay too much attention to this sort of thing, but God knows that it will get my attention.  The sign that I prayed for came quickly, as I was wandering aimlessly on the patio after church mingling with others.  I saw Kathleen Sutton ahead of me in the direction I was walking; she turned and looked at me, and I waved.  “Hello,” I said.

“Greg,” Kathleen replied.  “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

“What do you mean?”

“I work in the office that processes graduation applications.  We were doing this year’s Graduation Progress Trackers, and I recognized your name on one of the forms I filled out.”

“Oh, wow,” I said.  Kathleen Sutton was “KS” after all.

“I saw your transcript,” Kathleen continued.  “A 3.9 grade point average, and all As in all those hard math and science classes.  You have a pretty impressive academic record.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

“What are you planning to do after you graduate?”

“I’m going to be a teacher.  I didn’t think about being a teacher until just last year, but I was planning out the rest of my year this year, and I’ll be able to do all the requirements for the teacher certification program before the end of the year.”

“Good for you!  We definitely need good teachers who know their subject matter.  I’m sure you’ll do great.”

“Thanks.  Oh, by the way, if I’m misunderstanding something, and I file for graduation but I don’t actually have all the right classes, will someone let me know?”

“Definitely.  But I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

When I got home, I changed into an old pair of shorts and went to the small shed in the backyard.  Our house only had a covered carport, not a locked garage, so I typically left Schuyler, my bicycle, in the shed.  I had a long ride I would occasionally do around the entire perimeter of the city of Jeromeville, and with the October days getting shorter, I wanted to do my long ride again before it got too cold and gray.  I had sat down once with a ruler and a map and estimated the ride at fifteen miles, and the fastest I had ever completed the ride was just a few seconds short of an hour.  I rode west on Coventry Boulevard across Highway 117, worked my way through the neighborhoods of West Jeromeville, then headed back east on Fifth Street along the row of walnut trees that separated the city of Jeromeville to my left from the university’s agricultural research fields to my right.  After crossing back to the east side of 117, I cut through campus, past the North Residential Area and the Rec Pavilion, and emerging into downtown Jeromeville next to the Death Star building on Third Street.  Although I was trying for record time, pedaling as fast as I could, I slowed down a little bit through downtown, with its many cars, bicycles, and people.  I worked my way to the Cornell Boulevard underpass, still too narrow for its traffic volume, southeast past Murder Burger and across Highway 100.

I had learned quickly as a freshman that I would feel a bit out of place in a university town like Jeromeville with its hippies and extreme politics.  But now, as a senior, I was on a timeline to graduate eight short months from now, and I did not want to leave.  Jeromeville had grown on me.  It was the place where I found friends, and the place where I found Jesus.  I had gotten involved with youth ministry at church and built meaningful connections beyond the campus bubble.  Jeromeville, in all its quirkiness, was home.

I continued along the southernmost neighborhoods of Jeromeville, through the neighborhood where Eddie, John, Xander, and Lars had lived when I first met them sophomore year, and into a section of the Greenbelts where those guys had held the Man of Steel disc golf competition.  I continued east all the way to Bruce Boulevard, the easternmost of Jeromeville’s north-south thoroughfares, and turned to the north.  About a mile north, I crossed back over Highway 100, where a new neighborhood was under construction, rare in a city like Jeromeville where suburban sprawl is so hated.  I turned west on Coventry Boulevard and rode for almost three miles, then turned into the Greenbelts of north Jeromeville, emerging on Maple Drive about half a mile north of my house.  I looked at my watch when I got home: 58 minutes, 57 seconds, a new record for me.

Time moves forward.  Children grow up and become university students, who then go out into the real world and have children of their own.  But, although time was definitely moving forward, maybe I did not have to leave Jeromeville yet.  I would still have one more year at UJ in the teacher training program, so I would be a registered student through June of 1999.  If I did not get into UJ’s program, Jeromeville was close enough to commute to Capital State.  After that, there were plenty of high schools in commuting distance from Jeromeville where I could work; maybe I could even teach at Jeromeville High.  If I did leave Jeromeville eventually, as I would do in 2001, it would happen when the time was right, when I felt ready to move on.

Readers: Did your education and career end up happening according to your plan or projected timeline? Did you even plan these things in advance? Tell me about it in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

September 12, 1997. My return to the baseball stadium. (#144)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 9 Comments

I was never an athlete.  My brother Mark got all the athletic talent in our family.  I played tee ball when I was six years old; all I remember is that we did not keep score, which I thought was dumb, and the coach made me cry once.  My high school football career lasted one day, before I realized that I was in way over my head and badly out of shape.  Despite that, though, I still grew up around sports, watching games on television and working the scoreboard and snack bar for Mark’s baseball and basketball games.

I went to my first professional sporting event, a Bay City Titans baseball game, in 1982, the summer after I finished kindergarten.  A few years later, the four of us in our family started going to games more regularly, a few times every year, until the summer of 1994.  By that time, several months of negotiations had failed to produce a resolution between the players’ union and the team owners on money issues.  The players voted to strike, and the last month and a half of the season was canceled, as well as all postseason championship games.  The strike was not resolved until a few weeks into the 1995 season.

I moved to Jeromeville for school during that players’ strike, and with no baseball that fall and no cable TV with which to watch games once baseball resumed in the spring, I stopped following baseball closely.  Besides, I was still upset that the previous season had been canceled.  One of my favorite players, Matt Williams, had 43 home runs at the time the strike began, giving him a legitimate chance to break the record for home runs in one season, which was 61 at the time.  He never got that chance, and he never hit that many home runs in another season.  Baseball had broken my trust.

The strike did not affect the minor league teams playing in smaller cities, and some national television networks began showing high-level minor league games.  A new independent league, with players and teams not connected to the big leagues, formed in the western United States in 1995.  This league included a team in Santa Lucia County where I grew up, the Gabilan Peppers.  I went to a few games with my parents over the years when I was home during the summer, and they were always lots of fun.  Unfortunately, the Peppers only lasted a few seasons before folding.

I did not think about going to a baseball game again until just recently.  I had stayed in touch off and on over the years with Mrs. Allen, my English teacher from both seventh and eighth grade.  Seventh grade had been a very difficult year for me, I was going through things that I could not share with anyone around me, and I did not really have friends.  Mrs. Allen had been a positive influence for me that year, someone who believed in me and showed me that school could be a safe place.  Last week, shortly after I moved back to Jeromeville for the fall, I got an email from Mrs. Allen, asking how I was doing.  Among other things, she asked if I had been following the Titans, because they had a chance to win their division and make the playoffs.  She was a season ticket holder, and she invited me to come to a game with her before classes started again for me.  I told her that I had not been following closely since the strike, but it would be good to see her, and good to go to a game again after three years.

It was mid-afternoon on a Friday as I left Jeromeville for the Titans game, driving west on Highway 100 toward Bay City.  The first half hour of the drive, as far as Fairview, was very familiar to me, because that was also the first part of the drive to my parents’ house.  But after Highway 6 split off from Highway 100 to the south, the next thirty-two miles of busy freeway from there to the Bay City Bridge was a road I had only been on twice.  The first time was that weekend trip sophomore year when I rode in Eddie Baker’s car and kept hoping for a chance to talk to Haley Channing, and the other time was last year seeing the other major sports team in Bay City, the Captains football team.

In Oaksville, as I approached the bridge, traffic slowed to a halt.  This was normal for this area, especially on a Friday afternoon as people tried to get home from work and get either away from or into the city for the weekend.  I had left earlier than I needed to, expecting to hit traffic.  I inched forward at a crawl for about fifteen minutes leading to the toll booths.  I gave the toll taker one dollar, which was the toll on most of the area’s bridges at the time before it increased dramatically over the next couple decades.

Oaksville and Bay City were separated by about four miles of water.  Most of my trips to Bay City as a child were to watch Titans games, and the stadium is at the extreme south end of the city, so that I would not see much else of the city on those trips.  I had also been to a few other places that required driving across the city from south to north.  This spectacular view I had now of entering the city from east to west, with all of the tall buildings of the city’s downtown rising from the water below, was one I had only seen a couple times before.  I did not grow up around buildings this tall, and the concept of such a densely populated city fascinated me.  I could not fully admire the view, however, because I had to pay attention to where I was going.  The freeway was extremely crowded at this time of day, and I had to make sure that I was not in an exit-only lane, and that I would end up in the correct lane to continue onto Highway 11 southbound at the point where Highway 100 ended, two miles after the bridge.

After taking almost half an hour to drive the seven miles from the bridge to the stadium, I found a parking spot in the vast asphalt lot, among the sea of cars surrounding the stadium, and began walking toward the entrance.  The Titans’ stadium was built in the 1960s, during an era when the construction landscape in professional sports was dominated by huge concrete structures on the fringes of cities with little character on the outside.  Being in Bay City, there was at least the view of the bay, but even this was removed from the inside of the stadium in 1971 when the Captains began sharing the Titans’ stadium.  New seats were added to accommodate the larger crowds for football, surrounding the entire field 360 degrees in a misshapen ring, distorted to account for the different shapes of baseball and football fields.

Mrs. Allen had told me to meet her outside one specific entrance to the stadium, and as I approached, I was surprised that I found her relatively quickly, considering the size of the crowd.  She looked pretty much the same as she had when I was first in her class nine years earlier, a heavy-set woman in her late forties, with long hair typical of one her age who had been a hippie in her twenties.  She wore a Titans jersey and jeans.  I waved as I approached her.  “I hope you weren’t waiting long,” I said.  “I hit traffic.”

“Hi, Greg,” Mrs. Allen replied, giving me a side hug.  “I haven’t been here that long.  I figured traffic might be bad coming over the bridge.  How are you?”

“Pretty good.  Ready to go in?”

I followed Mrs. Allen to our seats, toward the back of the lower level.  The evening air was cool, because of the bay nearby, and would only get colder as the night went on.  Night games in Bay City had a reputation for being cold, and the stadium had been built in one of the coldest and windiest parts of the city, simply because it was one of the few places in the city with open land at the time.  I had been carrying a jacket, the same jacket I got for the trip to Urbana last winter, but I was not quite cold enough to put it on yet.  I was a little sweaty from walking from the car to the stadium.

“So how was your time in Oregon?” Mrs. Allen asked.  “What exactly were you researching?”

“Quasi-Monte Carlo integration using low-discrepancy sequences,” I explained.  “I was looking at ways to efficiently approximate integrals that can’t be calculated exactly using conventional means.  ‘Monte Carlo integration’ uses random numbers to make this approximation; that’s why it’s called Monte Carlo, because of random numbers being associated with gambling.  We were looking at ways to choose numbers that give more efficient and accurate approximations than just purely random numbers.”

“That’s all a bit beyond me,” Mrs. Allen said.  “When would you use something like this?”

“Any time you need to calculate an integral that can’t be calculated using normal methods.  Integrals are used for finding area and volume of irregular shapes.  And for any problem where you have to multiply, but the things you multiply are changing.  Like, for example, you multiply speed times time to find distance.  But if the speed is always changing in some predictable way, you would use an integral to find the total distance.  And some integrals can’t be calculated using regular techniques like adding and multiplying, so we need efficient ways to approximate them, and we need to know how accurate those methods are.”

“I see.  So what did you learn from your research?”

“Honestly, I’ve been telling people that the most important thing I learned was that I don’t really like math research.  But I’m glad to have learned this now, before I go invest years of my life and thousands of dollars in a Ph.D. program.”

“That’s a good point.  Graduate school is a huge commitment.”

“I know.”

“So do you know what you’re doing instead after you graduate?”

“Even though I said a few years ago I never wanted to, I’m now looking at being a teacher,” I explained.  “One of my professors set me up helping out in a high school classroom last spring, and I really enjoyed it.  I know I need a few more classes I hadn’t planned for as prerequisites for the teacher certification program.  I’m taking one of them this next quarter, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get them all in during this year.  So I don’t know yet if I’m going to graduate in the spring.  I might have to wait to start student teaching until the fall of ’99.  I’m also going to look into options for other teaching programs besides Jeromeville, but one of the professors from the Jeromeville program I’ve met before, so if I stayed at Jeromeville, I’d have that familiarity.”

Mrs. Allen had a look of excitement on her face; I could see that she approved of this career choice.  “Good for you!” she exclaimed.  “I think you’ll make a great teacher.”

“Thank you.”  It was an honor to know that I had Mrs. Allen’s vote of confidence, since she had been such an influential teacher in my career as a student.

“I’ll have to tell Mr. Colby when I see him on Monday,” Mrs. Allen said.  “I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear you’re looking into teaching.”

“Yes.  Tell him I said hi.”

“He used to tell that story all the time about the time he had to step out of the room, and when he came back a few minutes later, you were teaching the class.”

“I remember that,” I said, laughing.  “Someone asked me if I knew how to do a homework problem, and I didn’t want to scribble all over her paper, so I went up to the board to do it.  And when I was done, I turned around and everyone was watching me, and they started asking me more questions.”

“That’s a great story.”

The baseball game had begun by then.  The opponent was the Dallas Armadillos, and because of the recent changes made to baseball scheduling, this was the first time the Armadillos and Titans had ever played each other.  Before this year, teams in the two baseball leagues did not play each other until the end of the season, when the two champions would face each other.  Dallas was in the other league, and they had never been in the championship, so they had never played Bay City until this year.

The Titans scored first with a home run in the second inning, but their lead did not hold.  Three Dallas players got hits in the fourth inning, and two of them scored.  The game was then boring for about an hour as the teams took turns not scoring for the next few innings.  Mrs. Allen and I used that time to catch up and make small talk.  I told her more about my new house and roommates, as well as volunteering with the church youth group and being in chorus last year.

“When do classes actually start for you?” Mrs. Allen asked.

“September 25.  But next week I’m going on two retreats.  Monday through Friday I’ll be in Pine Mountain with Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  Then I’ll be leaving straight from there to a retreat with the youth group leaders from church, somewhere up near the Great Blue Lake.”

“That sounds like it’ll be fun!  A good way to spend the last week before school starts.  What classes are you taking?”

“Number theory, abstract algebra, writing in education, and chorus.”

“I’m glad you’re still doing chorus.  You were never doing anything with music back in middle school, were you?”

“No.  I was too self-conscious back then.”

“That’s too bad.  But I’m glad you found chorus eventually.”

“Thanks.”  

The crowd became more lively after the Armadillos’ pitcher threw two walks and gave up a hit, loading the bases for the Titans.  A new pitcher came in for the Armadillos, and the next Titans batter hit a ground ball and was thrown out for the second run of the inning.  The runner on third base was fast enough to score, giving the Titans a tenuous lead of three runs to two, and the crowd cheered loudly.

I stood and cheered, then sat back down a minute later. “It’s cold,” I said; more of my body’s surface area had been exposed to the cold night wind when I had stood, and I had no more layers of clothing to put on.

“It’ll be nice when the new stadium gets built,” Mrs. Allen said.  “The new location is supposed to be less windy.”

“So did they decide on a new location for sure?” I asked.  The team had been trying to get this old, windy stadium replaced for a long time.  Five years ago, the old owners tried to sell to a group that was going to move the team out of state, but the other teams in the league voted the sale down.  The owners then sold the team to a group committed to keeping them in Bay City with a plan to build a stadium close to downtown and the bridge.

“Yes.  It’s the same place they’ve been talking about for years, near the bridge,” Mrs. Allen explained.  “But they had to go through a long process to finally get everything approved.  Construction is supposed to start later this year, but it’ll be a couple more years until it’s done.”

“That’s exciting,” I said.

Both teams scored again shortly afterward, and by the end of the eighth inning, the score was tied at four each.  No one scored in the ninth inning, and the game went to extra innings.  I shivered in the cold wind as I watched the game and continued to make small talk with Mrs. Allen.  Neither one of us wanted to leave the game early, but I felt miserable sitting outside in the cold, even with a jacket.  The jacket did not stop the wind from blowing into my face, and I only wore one layer over most of my legs.

But my persistence paid off.  In the bottom of the twelfth inning, a new pitcher entered the game for Dallas, and he did not seem to have a good command of where his pitches were going.  He walked the first batter he faced, then two batters later, with one out, he gave up a double to the outfield.  With runners on second and third base, the next Titans batter got a hit, scoring the runner on third and giving the Titans a win, by a score of 5-4.  I jumped up and began screaming and clapping loudly.  I reached over and gave Mrs. Allen a high-five.  “Someone’s excited,” she said.

“That was awesome!”

I walked Mrs. Allen back to her car.  “Thank you so much for inviting me,” I said.

“Tjhank you for coming!  It was so good to see you.”

“Yes.  Say hi to all my other old teachers.”

“I will.  Drive safely!”

“You too!”

Even though it was still technically summer, I turned on the heater when I got back to my car.  I was cold.  This was my first time watching a big-league baseball game in over three years, and tonight was the perfect experience to reintroduce me to the sport.  The Titans had gotten a win in dramatic fashion, and they had a good chance to make the playoffs.  This was also the first time I had ever stayed to the end of a night game that went to extra innings, and sitting through the cold made it feel more like I earned the win.

It had been a long game, and it was well after eleven o’clock by the time I got back to the car.  The drive back to Jeromeville would have taken about an hour and a half in good traffic, but traffic after a major sporting event is rarely good, so I did not get home until one-fifteen in the morning.  Traffic was mostly stop-and-go for the first couple miles, and it slowed down in other spots elsewhere in the city.  By the time I finally got to the bridge, traffic was moving again, and the rest of the drive home was smooth and uneventful.

The Bay City Titans did in fact end up with the best win-loss record in their division, but they lost in the first round of the playoffs.  It would be over a decade before I would get to see them win a championship in my lifetime, but I would go to many more Titans games over the next few years.  I was at the final game played in this stadium, and while I was not able to go to the first game in the new stadium, I was at the fifth one, the first Saturday game in the new stadium.  

Mrs. Allen is the only teacher from my childhood whom I have stayed in touch with semi-consistently for my whole life, although Mr. Colby did find me on Facebook when I was in my late 30s.  I tend to see Mrs. Allen every few years, through a combination of planned events and chance encounters when I am back in Santa Lucia County.  We met for lunch the last time I visited back home, in June of 2022; she is now in her mid-seventies, with much shorter hair, and has been retired for some time.

I have also been on the other side of some of those teacher-student relationships, since I grew up to be a teacher myself.  Many students I have never seen again after they finished their time at my school, or after I left their school, whichever the case may be, but there have been a small handful who have stayed in touch to various degrees.  I have watched some of my former students grow up and become parents themselves, I have attended three weddings of former students, and I have experienced at least one hilarious awkward encounter with a former student who knew I looked familiar but could not place how she met me.  All of those are stories for another time, but those stories are part of what keeps me going in the demanding and exhausting field of education.

Readers: Do you follow baseball? Do you have any fun stories about memorable baseball games you’ve been to?

I know I’m a day late this week, and it’s for a reason kind of appropriate to this episode: I was in Bay City yesterday at a Titans game, with my parents and the Kanekos, at that new stadium that got built a few years after this episode.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

March 29-April 3, 1997.  A montage of the new quarter. (#126)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 21 Comments

“Now remember, Boz,” I said.  “When Brian finds out that you’re a Star Wars fan, he’s gonna test you and ask if you know the number of the trash compactor that Luke and the others almost got smashed in.”

“I don’t remember,” Boz replied.

“It’s ‘3263827,’” I said.

“‘3263827.’  I’ll remember that.”

I had just spent four days at my parents’ house for Spring Break, returning to Jeromeville on the Saturday morning before classes started.  Mom, my brother Mark, and his two best friends Boz and Cody followed me up for the day in a separate car.  Mom had gotten the idea that it might be fun for the boys to come visit, and with all three of them in high school now, it was never too early to start visiting universities.  We had met at McDonald’s for lunch, and now we were on our way back to my apartment.

“Hey,” Brian said when the five of us walked inside.

“This is my brother Mark, and his friends Cody and Boz,” I said to Brian.  “And you’ve met my mother before.”

“Boz?” Brian asked.

“Short for Matthew Bosworth,” I explained.

“Yeah,” Boz said.  “You can call me Boz.  Or Matt.  Either one.”

“Boz is as big of a Star Wars fan as you,” I said.

“I have a question I always ask Star Wars fans,” Brian explained, “to see if you’re a true fan.  What is the number of the trash compactor on the Death Star where they were stuck?”

“3263827.”

“Very good.”

“I have to admit, though, Greg prepared me, because he told me you would ask that.”

“Ah,” Brian replied.  “Do you have any obscure Star Wars trivia you ask people like that?”

“Sure.  Who is the director of photography?”

“I don’t know that one.”

“Gilbert Taylor.”

“Nice!  I don’t have all the obscure credits memorized.”

“I would just leave the credits on and watch the names sometimes.”

“That’s cool how each of us pays attention to different details,” Brian said.

The rest of the day went well.  I showed the boys around campus.  They came back to the apartment and played basketball in the common area.  I like to think that something from that day really made an impression, because Cody and Boz would both end up attending the University of Jeromeville after they finished high school.  My brother did not; he went to community college for a few years and then transferred to the State University of Bay City.


Sunday was Easter, my first since I began attending Jeromeville Covenant Church.  Church was more crowded than usual, but it was not as dramatic of a difference as Catholic Easter masses back home at Our Lady of Peace were compared to ordinary Sundays.

My first class Monday morning was not even on the University of Jeromeville campus.  I rode my bike along my usual route as far as the intersection of Andrews Road and 15th Street, then turned left on 15th and parked at the bike rack of Jeromeville High School.  I walked through the entrance to campus and found Mr. O’Rourke’s class toward the back of the school.  Mr. O’Rourke had told me to just sit at the table in the back, and I could help students work on problems later in the period.

Mr. O’Rourke was an older man with short gray hair and a no-nonsense personality.  After the students had arrived, he gestured toward me.  “This is Greg Dennison,” he said.  “He’s a student at UJ, and he’s going to help out in our class for the rest of the year.”  Some of the students turned around to look at me, intrigued; I waved at them.

As Mr. O’Rourke lectured, I looked around at what I could see of the class.  The class seemed very large to me; I counted forty-one students.  I was used to high school classes of around 30 students at most.  I would learn later that Mr. O’Rourke was semi-retired, only teaching the one class, and he was such a popular teacher that students would sometimes ask to be in his class even when it appeared full.

After Mr. O’Rourke finished explaining and demonstrating relationships between sine and cosine functions, I walked up to his desk.  “So, just walk around and help students now?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mr. O’Rourke said.  “That would be good.”

My first few times up and down the rows in the classroom, no one asked me anything.  This was a precalculus class, so these were mostly honor students; maybe none of them needed help.  Eventually, though, I saw one student who was leaving most of the work blank on his paper.  “Do you need help?” I asked.  “Do you understand what to do?

“I don’t get it,” the student said.

“What do you know about sine and cosine?  Can I see your notes for today?”  I pointed out what he had sloppily written in his notebook and showed him what he could use to solve the problem in front of him.  I could not tell how well he understood.

“Is there anything else I have to do?” I asked Mr. O’Rourke when the bell rang.

“No, not really,” he said.  “At the end of the week, we’ll talk about how it’s going so far.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As I walked toward the school entrance, past a row of lockers, I heard a female voice say, “Greg!”  I instinctively turned and looked, although as I did so I realized that I did not know anyone at Jeromeville High School.  This girl was probably talking to some other guy named Greg.  Maybe it was a student from Mr. O’Rourke’s class whom I just met this morning, but why would she need to talk to me now, outside of math class?  I saw a familiar face reaching into a locker as I turned around, and I realized that I did know someone at Jeromeville High School: Erica Foster from church.

“Hey,” I said.  “What’s up?”

“What are you doing here?” Erica asked.

“I’m doing a Math 197 tutoring class,” I said.  “I’m TAing in Mr. O’Rourke’s first period.”

“That’s awesome!  Everyone says Mr. O’Rourke is a great teacher.  I never got to be in his class, though.”

“He seems like the kind of teacher I would have liked.”

“So you want to be a teacher?  Is that why you’re doing this?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I said.  “I’m looking at different options for the future.  One of my professors asked me if I had ever thought about being a teacher, and he set this up for me.”

“That’s cool.”

“What are you doing next year?  You graduate this year, right?”

“Yeah!  I’m going on a mission trip to Turkey for part of the summer, and then I’m still waiting to hear back from some schools, but I’m probably going to stay home and go to UJ.”

“That’s cool,” I said.

“I need to get to class, but it was good running into you.”

“Yeah.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”


A few hours later, back on campus, I had Data Structures, a computer science class.  A lower-division computer science class, Introduction to Programming, was a requirement for the mathematics major.  In addition to the upper-division mathematics units required for my major, a small number of courses in statistics and computer science, including this Data Structures class, counted in place of upper division math units.  As a kid, writing code in BASIC on a Commodore 64, I enjoyed computer programming as a hobby.  I chose against majoring in computer science, though, because my computer knowledge was out of date, and I did not want a hobby to turn into work.  But I wanted to take this class, so I could learn more about programming while working toward my mathematics degree.

Technology-related majors were very popular at Jeromeville, especially in 1997 with the Internet just emerging as a consumer technology.  Because of this, computer science and computer engineering majors had priority to register first for most computer science classes.  This was my third attempt at taking Data Structures.  The first time, I was number 19 on the waiting list, and the professor said that no new spots would open up.  The second time, I had moved up to first on the waiting list by the first day of classes.  I was hopeful, but the professor said that they had already expanded the number of spaces in class beyond what they should have.  The number of computers in the labs was too small to support this many students, so no new spots would open up.  For the other computer science classes I had taken, I did most of my work at home, dialed up to the campus Internet late at night so as not to tie up the phone line.  I suspected that lab space was not as much of an issue now that working from home was possible.  But the department had not changed their rules.

This quarter, the professor gave the usual bit about the class already being too full, and no one else being admitted from the waiting list.  But this time, it did not matter, because I already had a spot in the class.  When I called in to register last month, I expected to get put on the waiting list, but it said I had successfully registered.  This might have been my only chance to take the class, so I took it.  I told this to Eddie from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship at the retreat last week, and he said this was God opening up a door for me.  Definitely.

After Data Structures, I had chorus.  As I walked toward the bass section, Danielle Coronado, who lived down the hall from me freshman year, came up to me and gave me a hug.  “Greg!” she said.  “You’re back!”

“Yeah.  I wanted to do chorus last quarter, but it was the same time as Dr. Hurt’s Writings of John class.”

“That’s right.  Well, I’m glad you’re back.”

“Thank you.”

I walked toward the bass section and sat next to a guy I recognized from fall quarter when I was also in chorus.  “Hey,” he said.  “Welcome back.  It’s Greg, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  I did not know this guy, I thought he was a music major, and I did not know the music majors very well.  I was surprised that he recognized me.

About fifteen minutes into class, after explaining some procedural matters, Dr. Jeffs, the conductor, said, “The pieces this quarter are Schubert’s Mass No. 2 and Brahms’ Neue Liebeslieder.  The sheet music is at the bookstore; hopefully you all have that by now.  We’ll start on the Schubert today.”  As he began playing and demonstrating part of Schubert’s Mass, Dr. Jeffs explained that Schubert was from Vienna, so we would be using Viennese Latin pronunciations instead of Italian Latin.  When performing Schubert, the word “qui,” for example, was pronounced “kvee” instead of “kwee.”  I had never heard of such a thing.  The Brahms piece was also entirely in German, a language I did not know how to pronounce.  I was sure I would get used to it.

The spring of 1997 was an unusual quarter for me; it was the only quarter that I did not have any actual mathematics classes.  Helping in Mr. O’Rourke’s class at Jeromeville High would go on my transcript as a two-unit math class, but I did not sit in a lecture or do homework out of a textbook.  Data Structures counted as a major requirement, but was not technically a math class.

This quarter was also my lightest load by number of units; I only took as many units as were required to maintain my status as a full time student.  But it certainly did not feel like a light load, because the two actual classes I was taking, besides Mr. O’Rourke’s class and chorus, were both extremely difficult and time-consuming.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I had Philosophy and Social Foundations of Education.  I had not made a final decision about my future, but I was now seriously considering the option of becoming a teacher, so I figured it would not hurt to start working on prerequisites for the teacher training program.

I could tell after ten minutes of class on the first Tuesday that this class would be a lot of work.  As a math major, I was not used to classes with this much reading and writing.  But the subject matter looked interesting, investigating some of the difficult questions about why education is important in society, and why schooling is done as it is.  As a possible future teacher, it was important to answer these questions, and I had to take this class at some point if I were to become a teacher.  Good thing I took it in a quarter when I had a light schedule.


Wednesday evening I had The Edge, the junior high school youth group at church, for which I was a volunteer.  The staff and volunteers arrived an hour before the students, and the meeting before the kids arrived felt a little different because Taylor Santiago was not there.  Taylor had been my friend since Day 1 of freshman year, and he had encouraged me to get involved with youth ministry after he noticed some boys from the youth group take a liking to me after church.  He left last week for six months of inner-city ministry in Chicago; he would be back for the start of the school year in the fall.

As the students walked in, we usually had music playing, typically some Christian artist.  Having only been a practicing Christian for a little over a year, I was just scratching the surface of the vast world of Christian contemporary music.  Whatever this music was that played today, I found it intriguing.  It sounded like rock with horns.  I only knew of one other band that sounded remotely like this, although that other band was not Christian music; this was definitely not them.  At the Spring Picnic freshman year, I had been told to go watch a local band called Lawsuit that played there every year.  Lawsuit was a unique blend of rock with horns that some people described as “ska,” the first time I had ever heard that word.  I went on to see Lawsuit play three more times in the two years since.

I was checking in students at the entrance that day, along with Erica Foster, the girl I saw at Jeromeville High after Mr. O’Rourke’s class.  Her younger brother was one of the teen boys who had taken a liking to me.  “What is this music?” I asked Erica.

“Five Iron Frenzy,” she said.  “My brother has been listening to this a lot at home.”

“I don’t know them,” I said.  “I just got excited that there’s a Chrsitian band that sounds like Lawsuit.”

“Is this what Lawsuit sounds like?” Erica asked.  “I’ve heard of them but I don’t know anything about them.”

“Sounded like,” I corrected.  “They broke up.”

“Really?  I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah.  This last New Year’s Eve was their last show.”

“That’s too bad.  I heard they were good.”

“They were!  They sounded like nothing I’d ever heard.  But now I’m gonna have to check out this Five Iron Frenzy.”

Jeromeville had a small Christian bookstore, and I went there as soon as I was done with classes the next day to find that the Five Iron Frenzy album, called Upbeats and Beatdowns, was in stock.  I brought it home and listened to it while I replied to a few emails in my inbox.  In November, I was saddened to receive a flyer from Lawsuit announcing their breakup.  I did not attend their final show, on December 31; I was halfway across the country at the Urbana conference on that day, and the show was for ages 21 and up, which I would not be until next August.  But now I was excited to discover a Christian band that sounded like Lawsuit.

I learned a few songs into the album that I had been mistaken; Five Iron Frenzy did not sound particularly like Lawsuit, beyond being rock with horns.  They had a much faster and more aggressive sound, more like punk rock with horns, a genre called ska-punk that was emerging at the time.  But it was catchy, and I could hear references to Christianity in the lyrics, at least when I could understand lead vocalist Reese Roper’s high-pitched, fast singing.

 A few minutes later, a song called “Anthem” came on, and I immediately began to regret my decision to buy this album.  Reese called America a hollow country, and sang about how he did not care about the American notion of freedom.  If the members of Five Iron Frenzy were Christians, why were they spewing this anti-American liberal crap?  As far as I knew, Christians were conservatives who loved their country.  Maybe this was not entirely true, I realized, as Reese sang about true freedom being from Jesus Christ.  But I still loved my country and did not find patriotism inherently at odds with Christianity.  Two other songs on the album besides “Anthem” directly criticized the sins of the United States and the shallow nature of the American church, but if I must be honest, these criticisms were certainly justified.

I liked most of the rest of the album.  In addition to songs praising God, the album also contained some songs that were just silly, like one about the old TV show Diff’rent Strokes and one about how Jesus is better than superheroes.  Other songs explored deep philosophical topics of interest to Christians living in this world, like one about colorful characters waiting for a bus.

The album did eventually grow on me, although to this day I still always skip “Anthem.”  I have had a complicated relationship with Five Iron Frenzy over the years, one that has featured some very personal experiences.  I sang one line on Reese Roper’s solo album in 2004, and I had an hour-long personal conversation with saxophonist Leanor Ortega-Till in 2020.  And in addition to recording some of my favorite songs ever, Five Iron Frenzy has also recorded many other songs in the same vein as Anthem that I did not particularly care for.

Currently, I have mixed feelings about Five Iron Frenzy.  They released an album in 2021 of all angry political music, with none of the Christian or silly songs.  Ultimately, though, I have always said that Five Iron Frenzy did a great job of bringing together Christian and secular fans, liberals and conservatives, just by being real.  I understand now that Christianity is not by any means limited to Americans or conservatives, and it should not be.  Paul writes to the Corinthians that different people have different gifts that are all part of the body of Christ.  Just as Boz and Brian had discovered their different takes on Star Wars trivia when they met a few days ago, people with different cultural and political backgrounds have different experiences with Christianity.  I may not agree politically with all Christians, but we are still one in Christ, each with a role in the global Church.

Hello, readers!  What’s an obscure fact about your favorite movie that you like to remember and tell people about?

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

Also, the Five Iron Frenzy music video below comes from an unofficial source on YouTube.  Just in case it gets taken down, I’ll include an official audio as well.

February 21, 1997. A productive day, in more ways than one. (#121)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 7 Comments

“So when Jesus said, ‘Before Abraham was born, I am,’ the people he was speaking to would have recognized ‘I am’ as what God said to Moses,” Dr. Hurt explained.  “Where’s Lorraine?  I feel like she would have something to say about this.”

Lorraine Mathews was a religious studies major, specializing in Christianity; I knew her from Jeromeville Christsian Fellowship.   I was not a religious studies major.  I took this Writings of John class, and its prerequisite the previous quarter, because I wanted to learn more about the Bible.  I had gotten involved with JCF sophomore year, through friends, and a year ago this month I made a decision to follow Jesus.  I grew up Catholic, where Bible reading consisted of a couple of paragraphs from three different books read aloud by the priest each Sunday, and I wanted to know more about the Bible.

I did not know why Dr. Hurt thought Lorraine would have something to say about this passage, but I did know exactly why she was not in class today.  In a somewhat uncharacteristic move for me, I spoke up, drawing attention to myself and hoping to get a laugh.  “She’s watching Empire Strikes Back,” I said, loud enough for all 150 students to hear.

“Oooooooh,” a few students said, as others chuckled.

“She skipped class for The Empire Strikes Back?” Dr. Hurt repeated.  “Hasn’t she seen that a bunch of times already?”

“This is the new one!” an unidentified student said.

“There’s a new one?”

“Yeah!  With added scenes.”

“Really.  Well, that’s too bad she missed class today.”

After the fact, I felt a little bad.  Maybe I should not have said that.  Maybe Lorraine would be unhappy with me.  She can be a bit feisty sometimes.  But I said what I said.  I wished that I had been watching The Empire Strikes Back with them.  Lucasfilm, the Star Wars production company, was in the middle of rereleasing the three movies with added and changed scenes to better match director George Lucas’ original vision.  The Star Wars movies were not a large part of my childhood, but my roommate Brian was a huge fan.  Brian had watched the new Star Wars multiple times in the last few weeks.  Today he and his friends were watching the next movie, on the first day it hit theaters.  I had seen Star Wars with my friend Barefoot James a few days ago, but Brian said that I could tag along the second time he saw Empire Strikes Back, and James could too.

After the John class ended, I wandered over to the Memorial Union to find a table and get homework done.  It was sunny but cold, so the indoor tables were crowded, but not as crowded as they would be on a rainy day.  I saw Ajeet Tripathi and Brent Wang from JCF sitting at a table.  Ajeet had a book open but did not appear to be actively reading it. 

“‘Sup, Greg?” Ajeet asked.

“Nothing,” I said.  “Just looking for a place to sit for a couple hours.  May I join you?”

“Sure,” Brent said.  “How many more classes do you have today?”

“None–”

“Why are you still here, dude?” Ajeet interrupted.  “It’s Friday afternoon!”

“I need to go to office hours for geometry.  We have a midterm Monday, and I have a few questions.”

Todd Chevallier, another of Ajeet and Brent’s housemates, arrived at the table and said, “Greg.  How’d you beat me here?”  He was coming from the John class also.

“I don’t know.  I guess I just walk fast?”

“Maybe.  Oh, yeah, I had to pee too,” Todd said.

“Greg, did you say you’re taking geometry?” Brent asked.  “Like we all took in high school?”

“It’s a lot more advanced than that,” I explained.  “In this class, we get a lot into the theory behind it, and how to construct a proof.  We also learned about the undefined terms and the foundations of geometry as a logical system.”  I looked up and saw the blank stares on the others’ faces, a familiar sight when I explained anything I learned as a third-year mathematics major to non-mathematics majors.  “It’s the theory behind what you do in high school geometry.”

“Uhh, sure,” Todd said after a pause.  The conversation went into a lull, and I got out my geometry book to work on homework.  Ajeet started singing, “Da da,” followed by some clicking noises, then “Da da da da da da,” six notes of equal duration with the two notes in the middle a minor third lower than all the other notes.  Ajeet repeated the riff, and Todd joined in; I recognized it from a song I had heard numerous times on the radio.

“What are you guys doing?” Brent asked.

“I’ve had that song stuck in my head all day,” Ajeet explained.

“What song?”

“‘Santa Monica,’ by Everclear.  ‘We could live beside the ocean, leave the fire behind…’”

“I’ve never heard it.”

“Really?  It’s on the radio all the time.”

A while later, I looked up from my studying to see Alaina Penn walking by.  Alaina was involved with University Life, another Christian group on campus, and I knew her through mutual friends.  Alaina saw me and waved, walking toward our table.

“Hey, Greg,” Alaina said.  “Mind if I pull up a chair?  If I can find one?”

“I actually need to get going,” Brent said.  “You can have my seat.”

“Thanks!”

“See ya, Brent,” Ajeet said.

“Have a great day,” I added as Brent said goodbye to us and walked away.

I was about to introduce Alaina to Ajeet and Todd, but I was quite well acquainted with the embarrassment of trying to introduce people who already know each other, so first I asked, “Do you guys know Alaina?”

“No,” Ajeet answered as Todd shook his head in the negative.

“She goes to U-Life.  I met her through mutual friends.”

“Were you at U-Life this week, Greg?” Alaina asked.  “I didn’t see you.”

“No,” I explained.  “I had other plans on Tuesday.”

“That was the night you went to see Star Wars with James, right?” Ajeet asked.

“You ditched us for Star Wars?” Alaina asked.  “It’s okay, I’m just messing with you.”

“Wait,” Todd said.  “Greg?  You go to U-Life too?”

“I’ve been once.  Two weeks ago.  Alaina and her friends invited me, and I thought it might be nice to check it out.”

“I went a couple times freshman year.  Their large group meetings were a lot like JCF.”

“I noticed that too.”  I did not tell Todd or Ajeet the complete reason why I wanted to try out U-Life, that I felt frustrated at being on the outside of the cliques within JCF.

“Spring training is starting soon!” Ajeet announced.  “Do you guys follow baseball?”

“No,” Alaina answered.

“I used to,” I replied.  “I went to maybe three or four Bay City Titans games every year with my family.  I moved out right when the players went on strike, and I never got back into it.”

“Bummer,  But at least you like the right team,” Ajeet said.  “Baseball is of God.”

“Whoa,” Todd replied.  “Blasphemy?  ‘Baseball is a god?’”

“I said baseball is of God, not a God.  Baseball is God’s gift to us.”

A while later, I heard a new voice say, “Hey, guys.”  Ben Lawton and Whitney Felton, two of Alaina’s friends from U-Life, approached.  “Mind if we join you?”

“Go for it,” I said.  The table next to us was now empty, and I moved aside so that they could push the empty table next to us and make more room.  Whitney introduced herself to Ajeet and Todd; Ben had met them before, since he occasionally attended JCF also.  It was Ben who had first introduced me to Alaina.

“What are you up to the rest of the day?” Ben asked me a bit later.

“I’m going to a professor’s office hours.  What about you?”

“I have a class at 3.”

“A class Friday at 3,” Todd repeated.  “That’s brutal.  It’s bad enough that Ajeet and I have class Friday at 2.”

“We should probably get going for that,” Ajeet added.  “It was nice meeting you guys.  Greg, I’ll see you tonight at JCF?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Have a good one.”

I continued working on homework.  A few minutes after Ajeet and Todd left, Alaina said, “So Whitney and I had this great idea the other day.  We’re gonna throw a coffee house party.  We’ll make all kinds of special coffee drinks, and we’ll decorate the house like a coffee shop.”

“And we’ll have poetry readings, and we’re hoping someone will play live music for part of the night,” Whitney added.  “And we’ll make art to put on the wall.”

“That’s a great idea,” Ben said.  “When is this?”

“Oh, not any time soon.  We’re too busy this quarter.  We’re thinking maybe April.”

“Sounds like fun!”

The three of them started discussing who they could ask to play music and make artwork, naming people I did not know.  At one point, Alaina asked, “Greg, what do you think?”

“Oh,” I said, unaware that I was included in this discussion since it seemed to revolve around U-Life people.  “That sounds like a lot of fun!  Keep me posted.”  I left out the detail that I did not like coffee; it still sounded like fun even without coffee.

At around quarter to three, I stood up and said, “I should probably get going.”

“Me too,” Ben replied.

“You know what’s really funny?” I added.  “When I sat down here two hours ago, it was all JCF people at this table.  And the table gradually transitioned into U-Life people.”

“That is funny!” Alaina said.  “Greg, you just have a lot of friends.”

“I guess I do.  Have a good weekend, you guys!”

“Thanks!” Whitney replied.  “You too!”


For the last year, I would have said that Dr. Thomas was my favorite mathematics professor, but now it was a toss-up between her and Dr. Samuels.  Dr. Samuels was a much better teacher than most of the professors I had.  His was the only math class I ever took that did not feel like just a lecture.  He called on students at random, like a high school teacher might, and he would pause class a few times each hour and tell us to turn to our neighbors and summarize what we just learned.  This helped, especially on days when I could not stay awake.

Four other students came to Dr. Samuels’ office hours that day; apparently I was not the only one who needed refreshing on these topics.  From this class, I was beginning to see geometry in a new light.  My high school geometry textbook had said that every logical system had to begin with undefined terms, and that “point,” “line,” and “plane” were undefined terms in Euclidean geometry.  Why were they undefined, I thought?  It seemed lazy.  One could at least describe the concepts of points, lines, and planes using English, right?

After Dr. Samuels’ class, the concept of undefined terms made more sense.  Geometry begins with basic postulates, such as that two points determine a line.  The terms are undefined because these assumptions determine all the properties that a geometer would need to know about points and lines.  Furthermore, one could construct a geometric system where “point” and “line” were understood to mean something else, and all of the theorems would still apply in that system, since they were based on those basic assumptions.  If “point” were understood to mean what would normally be called a line, and “line” were understood to mean what would normally be called a point, some of the basic postulates would still be true.  Two lines, in the real world sense, determine one point.  This thought blew my mind.

After Dr. Samuels answered my question, he said, “By the way, Greg, can you stick around for a while?  I want to ask you something after we’re done here.”

“Sure,” I said.  “I was going to listen to everyone else’s questions anyway.”  I felt a little nervous over the next twenty minutes, wondering what Dr. Samuels wanted to talk to me about.  Was I in trouble?  I did my best to concentrate on what my classmates were asking.

After the last person left Dr. Samuels’ office, he said, “So, Greg.  What are your plans for after graduation?  I always ask this of strong students like you.”

“I’m not really sure,” I replied sheepishly.  If Dr. Samuels thought I was a strong student, I should have a better answer than that.  “I’ve been trying to figure that out.  I went to the Math Club’s career fair, and nothing really stood out to me.  Dr. Thomas told me about REU programs, so I’m thinking about that for this summer, to get a sense of what grad school would be like.”

“Have you ever considered being a teacher?  I’ve done some work with secondary education, and I’ve heard the way you explain things to others in class.”

Of all the reasons Dr. Samuels might have wanted to talk to me individually, this was not what I was expecting.  For years, I had said that I would never be a teacher, because of the politics involved in public schools.  Many of my high school teachers were active and outspoken politically, with views that I disagreed with.  I had always assumed that I would stay in school forever and become a mathematician, but my disillusionment with the career fair had left my future plans undecided.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I didn’t think much about teaching at first, but everything feels up in the air now.  And I work as a tutor at the Learning Skills Center, and I do enjoy that.”

“If you ever want to give it a try, you can get two units on your transcript as Math 197.  You’ll help out in a classroom at Jeromeville High for the quarter, and at the end you’ll write a short paper about what you did and what you learned.  If you’re trying to figure out your career plans, it would be a great way to immerse yourself in the world of teaching.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It sounds like it.  When do I have to let you know by?”

“Sometime next week should be good.  Think about it.”

“I will.  Thanks for letting me know about this.”

“You’re welcome.  This state is always looking for good teachers, especially ones with strong mathematics backgrounds.”

“Yeah.”

I left Dr. Samuels’s office and walked toward the bus stop.  This was a new wrinkle in the fabric of my life.  Could I be a teacher?  I tried to picture myself in a classroom with thirty sullen teenagers who called me Mr. Dennison.  I was sure it would be challenging, but it could be fun and enjoyable as well.  I enjoyed my tutoring job, I always enjoyed explaining math to people, and I had been spending a lot of time around younger people through volunteering with the youth group at church.

“Greg!” an enthusiastic female voice shouted as I approached the bus stop.  I saw Yesenia Fonseca, one of the first students I ever had as a tutor, waving at me.  “What’s up?”

“Just thinking,” I said.  “My professor just asked me if I had ever considered being a teacher.  I’d never really pictured myself as a teacher.”

“You’d totally be a great teacher!” Yesenia replied.  “I had another tutor last spring quarter, and she wasn’t good at explaining at all, like you were.”

“He said I could get units for helping in a classroom at Jeromeville High.  I’m thinking I might do it.”

“You should!”

Yesenia’s bus arrived just seconds before mine; we said goodbye and headed home.  Shawn, one of my roommates, was studying to be a math teacher.  He was doing his student teaching at Laguna Ciervo High School, across the Drawbridge in a suburban neighborhood just outside of Capital City.  When I got home, I told Shawn about what Dr. Samuels had said.

“You should go for it,” Shawn said.  “I think you’d be a good teacher.  We definitely need good teachers.  The teacher I’m working with is terrible.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He’s just mean.  He keeps telling kids, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’  I mean, I get you have to establish authority, but there’s got to be a better way.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t see you like that.  I think you should try it.”

All weekend, I could not get this off my mind.  This had been a productive day, in more ways than one.  I had gotten a lot of work done sitting in the Memorial Union.  I had learned of an upcoming party at Alaina and Whitney’s house, another connection with a new group of friends.  And Dr. Samuels had given me something to think about regarding the future.  Me, Mr. Dennison, teaching high school kids about algebra and geometry.

Sure, Shawn was not having the best experience with student teaching.  But I was not Shawn.  Hopefully I would have a better experience.  Yesenia had told me that I would make a good teacher, and as a former tutee, she would know.  I would tell Dr. Samuels on Monday that I wanted to help out at Jeromeville High; the worst that could happen was that I would discover that I would not like it.  I would still get two units for it.  It was an option to explore, and that was what I needed right now.

Author’s note: Who was your favorite teacher, and why?

January 23-28, 1997. Time to start thinking about the future. (#116)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 18 Comments

I walked into Kerry Hall and pressed the Up button for the elevator.  As I waited for the door to open, I noticed a flyer for the event I was going to on a bulletin board.  I walked over and read the flyer, even though I already knew the time and place of the event; we had discussed this upcoming event in detail at this month’s Math Club meeting.

MATHEMATICS CAREER FAIR
Presented by the University of Jeromeville Math Club
January 23 – 3-5pm – 450 Kerry

Kerry Hall, home to the offices of the mathematics and statistics departments, was easy to navigate; each of its six floors consisted of one straight hallway about two hundred feet long. Room 450 would be at the low-numbered end of the fourth floor.  The first digit of the room number was the floor, but for some reason the numbering on each floor started in the 50s at the end close to the elevators and ended in the 90s at the other end.  I wondered if this was because each floor of adjacent Wellington Hall only had room numbers ending between 01 and 30, so that way the two buildings would not repeat room numbers.  I also wondered if I was the only person on the Jeromeville campus who actually thought about such things.

I got off on the fourth floor and turned left, where I expected room 450 to be.  A sign next to an open door said 450 – GRADUATE STUDENT STUDY ROOM.  I did not know that this room existed, probably because I was not a graduate student.  On the other side of the door, a sign that said MATHEMATICS CAREER FAIR had been taped to the wall.  I cautiously walked inside.

I recognized several students I knew from Math Club.  Sarah Winters was picking up brochures from a table; she looked up and saw me in the doorway.  “Greg!” she said, waving.  Although Sarah was also a mathematics major, and one of my best friends, we had never had a math class together.  I knew her because she had lived downstairs from me in the dorm freshman year, and I also knew her from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship and from my church.

“Hey,” I said to Sarah.  “How are you?  What table is this?”

“School of Education,” she replied.  “I don’t know yet if I’m going to stay in Jeromeville for my teacher certification program.  I’m thinking I’ll probably move back home, but I may as well look into all the options.”

“Good idea.”

“Are you still not interested in being a teacher?”

“Probably not,” I replied.

“You’re still working as a tutor, right?  Why aren’t you interested in teaching if you like tutoring?”

“I like helping people learn math, but I don’t want to get involved in all the politics involved in public education.”

“Yeah, that’s one thing I’m not looking forward to.  What about private school?”

“Don’t private school teachers make less money?”

“Yeah, but if you really love what you do, money shouldn’t be an object.  Would you want to teach at a community college, or a university, or something like that?”

“If I stay in college forever, I’ll probably end up being a professor and having to teach.”

“That’s true.  Is that what you want to do?”

“I always kind of thought so, but I’m starting to realize I need to explore my options.”

“Well, you came to the right place.”  Sarah gestured across the room.  The UJ School of Education table where we were now was the first in a row of four manned exhibits.  At the far end of the room, the rest of the furniture that was usually in this room appeared to have been pushed to the side, to give fair attendees room to mingle.  I was not sure exactly how many exhibitors I expected at a career fair, but the answer was definitely more than four.  This was disappointing.

“I need to go,” Sarah said.  “Enjoy the rest of the fair!”

“Thanks,” I replied.  “I’ll see you around.”

After Sarah left, I walked to the next table.  “Are you interested in being an actuary?” a man in a business suit asked me from behind the table.

“I don’t know,” I replied.  “I’m kind of just gathering information right now.  I hear a lot about actuaries when people talk about math careers, but I’m not sure exactly what you do.”

“Basically, we predict the future,” he explained.  “We use mathematical modeling to make predictions, which are used by insurance companies to determine rates and risk assessment figures.”

“I see.”

“I represent the Casualty Actuarial Society.  We give the exams that actuaries have to pass.”

“Do you go to grad school to get a degree to be an actuary?”

“Usually not.  You get hired first for an entry-level position, and your job training includes prep for the exams.  Then you get promoted after you pass the exams.”

“I see,” I said.  “I’ll think about that.”  I took his brochure and put it in my backpack, although from his description, being an actuary sounded incredibly boring and unfulfilling.

I next went to the table for Sun Microsystems, a computer company big enough for me to have heard of it.  “Hi,” the woman at the table said.  “We’re looking for applied math majors with computer programming or computer engineering experience.  Is that you?”

“Not really,” I said.  “But can I have a brochure, in case I change my emphasis?”

“Sure!”

I took the Sun brochure and put it with the others.  I had chosen not to major in computer science, because I did not want a hobby to turn into work.  I also knew that most of my technology skills were vastly out of date.  I had grown up with only my childhood Commodore 64 until I got my current computer as a high school graduation present, years after the Commodore had been discontinued.  I had taken two computer science classes sophomore year and learned to code in Pascal and C.  Computer Science 110, Data Structures, counted in place of an upper-division mathematics class toward my major; I had registered for the class this quarter and got put on the wait list, but I did not get in.

The fourth and final table was for Graduate Studies in the UJ Department of Mathematics.  I took their brochure as well to learn about the different programs offered, although much of that information I already knew from the course catalog.  This career fair felt like a giant disappointment.

An older student named Brandon, whom I knew from Math Club, asked me as I was leaving, “So what did you think?”

“It was a little disappointing.  Nothing really stood out to me.  I still don’t know what I want to do.”

“Don’t forget, the Engineering Career Fair is coming up on Tuesday.  You should look at that one too, if you’re looking for what you can do with a math degree.”

At that moment, a familiar woman’s voice said from behind me, “Greg? I just overheard what you were saying; can I talk to you for a minute in my office?  I have something you might be interested in.”

“Dr. Thomas,” I said, turning around.  “I didn’t see you here.”  I had taken Combinatorics from Dr. Thomas sophomore year, and she was my favorite mathematics professor so far.  She explained things clearly, in non-broken English, and she made an effort to get to know students more than most of my professors had.  She also attended Math Club meetings sometimes.

“Sure,” I said.  I followed Dr. Thomas upstairs to her office on the far end of the fifth floor.

“Are you familiar with REU programs?  Research Experiences for Undergraduates?”

“No,” I said.

“The National Science Foundation has programs that you can apply to and do research in your field.   Some of them, you can get credits for, or you get paid a stipend.  I’m trying to start an REU here at Jeromeville, but there are programs like this at schools all around the country.”

“I see.”

“A colleague whom I’ve worked with runs the program at Williams College in Massachusetts.  And three are others much closer if you don’t want to travel that far.  It’s a good way to get a sense of what graduate school is like.  Being that you’re an excellent math student, wondering about your future, I think it would be good for you to apply to REUs.”

“Sure,” I said.  “What do I have to do?”

“Here’s the brochure from the NSF,” Dr. Thomas said, handing me a paper.  “They have a website with links to different schools’ programs, and you can find all the instructions on how to apply there.”

“I will look into that,” I said.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.  And whatever happens, with how well you do in math, I know you’ll figure out what you want to do.”


The Engineering Career Fair was much larger than the Mathematics Career Fair; I expected it to be, since it was being held on the floor of the Pavilion, where the UJ Colts basketball teams played.  Engineering was also a much more popular major, and one more directly connected to industry.  A sea of tables, probably close to a hundred of them, covered the floor.  The region around San Tomas, Sunnyglen, and Willow Grove, a little over a hundred miles to the south, was a hub of technology companies; I expected that many of them had representatives here looking for people with computer experience.  Surely someone here would have a career option for pure mathematics majors.

I had not brought résumés to the career fair.  Next year, when I would be close to graduation, it would be more important to do so, but today was still mostly about gathering information.  Of course, if I found an internship for this summer that I wanted to apply to, I would still need to make a résumé and send it in.  We had discussed making résumés at this month’s Math Club meeting, and I mostly just felt frustrated and unaccomplished.  “I don’t know what to put on my résumé,” I said to Brandon at one point.  “I don’t have any work experience, or skills.”

“Sure you do,” Brandon replied.  “Just put what you can do.  On my résumé, I put ‘problem solver.’  Because when you give me a problem, I’ll solve it.”

“Hmm,” I said.  I was not a problem solver like Brandon.  I had tons of unsolved problems in my life, and padding my résumé with vague embellishments that I could not back up with action or experience would not help solve any of them.

I walked to the first table in the row closest to me.  A pile of mechanical pencils lay on one end of the table.  “May I have one?” I asked.

“Sure,” the woman behind the table said.  I read the pencil: NNC DATA SOLUTIONS, INC., SAN TOMAS.  “What’s your major?” she asked.

“Math.”

“Pure math?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re looking for computer science majors with experience in coding.  I don’t think we have any positions or internships for pure math.  Sorry!”

I continued up and down each row of tables, picking up lots of free pens, pencils, notepads, and foam balls to squeeze for stress relief purposes, each with companies’ names and contact information printed on them.  And I got the same story from each one of them: they were looking for computer science or engineering majors, not me.

At one point, I walked to a table I had not visited yet, for a company in Sunnyglen called West Coast Technologies.  I grabbed their free pencil and notepad.  “Do you have a résumé?” the woman behind the table asked.

“No,” I said.

“You need a résumé to apply for a job,” the woman replied, in a condescending tone.

“I’m just gathering information this year,” I explained, trying to hide my shame and frustration.

“What’s your major?”

“Math.”

“We’re looking for computer science majors.  But, hey, maybe ten years from now, when you’re wondering why you chose math for your major, you’ll go back to school for computer science, and we might have something for you!”  She made an amused chuckle.

I walked away without saying another word to the West Coast Technologies lady.  Who does she think she is?  How exactly does mocking an applicant to his face help your company recruit employees?  If I did go back to school in ten years, I thought, I certainly would not apply to work for West Coast Technologies.  Hopefully they would be out of business by then.

I continued past the next table.  I had only three tables left to visit, and I could tell from the names of the companies represented that they were looking specifically for engineers.  I turned toward the exit, not watching where I was going, and almost bumped into someone who was facing away from me.  As I looked up at this guy, who was about an inch taller than me, I realized that I recognized this tall guy with curly dark blond hair, and I became even more embarrassed.

“Sorry, Todd,” I said as he turned around.  “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“Hey, Greg,” Todd Chevallier replied.  “No problem.  What are you up to?”

“Looking to see if there are any options for math majors here.  There aren’t.”  I told him about the condescending lady from West Coast Technologies, as well as the unsuccessful Mathematics Career Fair from the previous week.

“Well, what do you want to do with your math degree?”

“I’m not sure.  I always assumed I would just stay in school forever and become a professor, but now I don’t know anymore.  And I’m starting to stress about it.”

“Have you thought about going into teaching? It seems like a lot of people with math degrees do that.”

“I don’t want to be a teacher,” I explained.  “I don’t want to deal with the politics involved in education.”

“Yeah, I get that.  Don’t stress, though.  You have time to figure things out.  You’re only a sophomore.”

“I’m a junior.”

“What?” Todd exclaimed, with a puzzled look on his face.

“I’m a junior.”

“But I thought you and I were both new at JCF last year.  Freshman year.”

“We were.  But it was my sophomore year.  I didn’t go to JCF freshman year.”

“Really.  Wow.  It’s weird that I never knew that.  I guess you do need to start thinking about your future.”

“I know.”

“Good luck.  Pray about it.  I’ll see you Friday?”

“Yeah.”


I rode my bike home more slowly than usual, feeling disappointed and discouraged.  I pulled a random CD from the shelf; it was New Adventures In Hi-Fi, the recently released album from R.E.M.  More disappointment; I did not like this album as well as their previous ones, although it did have a few good songs. I played it anyway.

I looked through the brochure that Dr. Thomas gave me.  I connected the computer to the dial-up Internet and went to the main website for the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.  I found the list of schools offering REUs for mathematics; there were quite a few, but none were nearby.  If I ended up doing this for the summer, I would have to travel, but that was not necessarily a bad thing.

School was what I was good at, so I always assumed I would stay in academia forever.  However, even that felt uncertain now.  And unless I changed my mind about being a teacher or an actuary, I had no other career options.  The good news was that, with my future so wide open, I could try different things and see what I did and did not like.  But this would require some work, and I always felt anxious about possibly making the wrong decision.  I got out my homework for tomorrow’s Advanced Calculus class and worked on that, putting aside my career uncertainty for now.  I knew that God had a plan, and I felt encouraged that Dr. Thomas believed in me, but all of this still felt overwhelming.  It was time to start thinking about the future, but none of this was imminently urgent, so planning my future career could wait.

Readers: Have you ever been told anything unusually cruel when being turned down for a position, or for something else?

Disclaimer: None of the corporations or organizations mentioned in this story were involved in its writing or production, and this is not a sponsored post.  Some of the corporations and organizations are fictional.

May 26-28, 1995. Friends far away. (#40)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 19 Comments

By the time Memorial Day weekend arrived in late May, the weather in Jeromeville had become quite summer-like.  The bike ride from Wellington Hall to the South Residential Area only took five minutes, but I was doing that bike ride in 88-degree sunshine, so I was already starting to sweat by the time I got back to my dorm room.  It was the Friday before a three-day weekend, and I was drained from a long week of classes.  I unlocked my door and turned on the air conditioning.  Cool air began blowing into the room.  I took off my shoes and lay face down on the mattress, dozing off for about an hour.

I spent a couple hours writing emails and catching up on Usenet groups, and reading for fun.  Shortly before six o’clock, I walked to the dining commons. I saw Taylor, Pete, Charlie, Ramon, Liz, Caroline, and Sarah at a table.  Next to Charlie was an empty seat with a half-empty glass of water on the table next to it. I could not tell if anyone was sitting there.

“May I join you?” I asked.  “Is that seat taken?”

“Go ahead,” Charlie replied.  “There’s always room for hydrochloric acid.”

“Wait, what?” I asked.  Charlie laughed. “That was random,” I said.

“I know.”

“How’s it goin’?” Taylor asked.

“I’m good,” I replied.  “It’s a three-day weekend, and they turned the AC back on.”

“I know!” Sarah said.  “It feels so nice!”

“So, Greg, what are you doing this summer?” Taylor continued.  “Will you be back home in Plumdale?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Working?  Doing anything like that?”

“My mom told me the other day she found a job for me.  One of my brother’s friends, his mom works at this small bookstore.  I guess it’s just her and the owner working there. She wants to cut her hours for the summer to be around more when her son isn’t in school.  So Mom told her that I was going to be home for the summer, and I could use a part-time job.”

“And do you want to do this?”

“I wish Mom would have asked me first, although she did say I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to.  But I’m not going to be doing anything else all summer, I’ll be getting paid for it, and it’s a job I don’t have to go find and interview for.  So I’m ok with it.”

“Yeah,” Taylor replied.

“Good point,” Pete said.

I really would have preferred for Mom to have consulted me first before volunteering me to a commitment of several hours per day.  However, the thought of having to go find a job was terrifying, and this way I had something lined up without having to look for it, as I had told Taylor and Pete.  Besides, working in a bookstore sounded fun. Maybe I could sample the merchandise and read on slow days, and maybe I would get an employee discount.

We all went downstairs to check the mail after dinner.  When I saw an envelope with handwriting on it, I felt my heart race.  I had written that letter almost two weeks ago, not knowing what would happen, not even knowing for sure whom I was writing to.  How long did it take for a letter to travel from one end of the USA to the other anyway? And after she got it, she would need time to reply, and then her letter would have to travel back across the country to Jeromeville.  Would she write back right away? Maybe I sent it too early. She was still in the middle of finals when I wrote; she hadn’t moved home yet. Maybe her parents got it and interrogated her about why she was getting mail from this strange boy in another state.  Maybe her parents threw it away.

I removed the letter from the mailbox and looked at the envelope.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the return address. It was from Carol Allen in Plumdale. This was not the letter I was nervous about.  This was from someone I had known for years, who had already written me once this year.

I noticed that my friends were moving toward the Help Window, which meant that someone had to pick up a package too big to fit in the mailbox.  I walked over to where they were. “Someone got a package?” I asked.

“It’s for Caroline,” Sarah said.  “You got a letter from someone?”

“It’s from Mrs. Allen.  She was my English teacher in both 7th and 8th grade.”

“And she writes to you in college?  That’s so sweet!”

“I know.  This is the second time she has written.  My mom ran into her somewhere back home a few months ago, and she told Mom to tell me to write to her.”

“She sounds nice.”

“She is.  I was in her class when I was going through a really rough time.  I was at a new school in the middle of 7th grade, and I had had a lot of problems at my other school before that.  She really made me feel welcome and accepted. A lot of the teachers at my old school acted like they didn’t want to deal with me.  And I know that ‘a lot’ is two words, because Mrs. Allen always made a big deal of it whenever someone would write ‘alot’ as one word.”

Sarah laughed.  “That’s funny!”

“I knew ‘a lot’ was two words before Mrs. Allen’s class, but I still remember her making a big deal of it.”

“It’s funny how some teachers stay in your memory forever.  Like I had this math teacher who would always make the dumbest jokes.  He’d say, ‘What’s 4y minus 3y,’ and you’d answer ‘y,’ and he’d say ‘because I asked you.’”

I chuckled.  “That’s great.  And then there are some teachers who you remember for all the wrong reasons.  Like Mr. Milton, my history teacher from junior year. He made fun of Catholics and Republicans all the time.”

“That’s not nice.”

“I still remember all these random things I learned about history from his class, though, so he did something well, but I didn’t think he was very nice.”

I opened the letter from Mrs. Allen when I got back to my room.  

 

May 24, 1995

Dear Greg,

Sorry it has taken so long to write back, but I’ve been busy.  You know how it is. I’m sure you’re busy too. Jeromeville is on trimesters, if I remember right, so you should still be in your dorm room.  When is the school year over? Our last day is June 8.

I’m going to get a new computer and get online soon.  Mr. Coburn got us America Online at school, and he has been showing me how it works.  Once I figure out how to set it up, I’ll send you an e-mail. It looks like there are all kinds of interesting things you can do.

I went to the Titans game yesterday.  I got a partial season package again, so I have a ticket to 20 games.  I have a much better seat this year because a lot of people didn’t renew.  I knew that would happen after the strike. I’m so happy the strike is over!  I missed the Titans. I thought of you because the University of Jeromeville band played the pre-game show.

I hope everything is well with you.  Take care of yourself and good luck with finals!

Love,
Carol

P.S.  I think it will be OK for you to use my first name now.

 

The postscript at the end made me laugh.  Everyone knows that one does not address a teacher by his or her first name.  Mrs. Allen said it was okay to call her Carol, but I just would never be able to bring myself to do that.  It was okay now, because I was an adult, but it still sounded wrong. Mrs. Allen would always be Mrs. Allen to me.  That was just how things worked when addressing a teacher, even years or decades after being in that teacher’s class.

I did not know that the University of Jeromeville Band had played a pre-game show at a Titans game.  I had grown up watching Bay City Titans baseball, traveling up there with my family about three or four times a year to attend games in person.  But I had not been keeping up with the Titans, or baseball in general, this year. The end of the previous season had been canceled because of a players’ strike.  There was no World Series that year. Furthermore, Matt Williams, the Titans’ third baseman, had hit 43 home runs by the time the strike began in early August, possibly putting him in position to set a new record for home runs in one season.  The record at the time was 61. But the season was canceled, he had no chance to hit any more home runs, and in two more seasons with the Titans and seven with other teams, he never reached this level of power hitting prowess again. The strike had continued on into the 1995 season but was settled early in the season, and baseball had finally resumed at the end of April, a few weeks later than the usual start of the season.  I did get interested in baseball again eventually… but that is another story for another time.

 

The next morning, I got out of bed around nine.  That was sleeping in for me, the best I could do.  I studied and did homework for about two hours, then decided to reward myself with a bike ride.  I rode north to the Coventry Greenbelts, where I had ridden last week, and discovered a bike path skirting the northern edge of the city.  Riding west, the path passed fenced backyards on the left and some kind of drainage or irrigation canal to the right, with open fields on the other side.  The path turned south, with ends of culs-de-sac connecting to the path, before zigzagging west again and then south one more time. At this point, the drainage canal  entered the Jeromeville city limits, with a neighborhood of large luxury homes visible on the other side of the canal. I was not sure where this neighborhood was or what it connected to.  I saw a pedestrian and bicycle bridge cross the canal into that neighborhood, but I did not go that way.

The path turned south along a park with a playground, basketball courts, and an open grass area.  I rode past a sculpture of dominoes. The park then narrowed, so that fences of backyards came close to the path on either side, much like the other paths I had discovered last week.  After making several more turns, and not being sure of exactly which direction I was going now, the path narrowed to a small sidewalk, next to a parking lot. I appeared to be in the back of a large apartment complex.  I wondered which one; I probably had heard of it, from when I was looking through that apartment guide trying to find a place to live next year.

Suddenly, as I got closer to the actual buildings, riding through the parking lot, I realized that I knew exactly where I was.  Not only had I heard of this apartment complex, but I had looked at these apartments. I had even signed a lease here. This was Las Casas Apartments on Alvarez Avenue, and I was looking right at my home for next year, apartment 124.  This was convenient; my apartment for next year was right next to the Greenbelts. I would have a lot of opportunities to explore Jeromeville on my bike from my new apartment.

When I got back to campus, I checked my mail before going back up to my room.  All the anxious excitement I felt yesterday when I checked the mail came back when I saw the letter that I had been expecting the day before.  The return address said “M. Boyle,” with a box number and rural route in a town I had never heard of, called Muncy, Pennsylvania. My name and address had been handwritten on the envelope, in black ballpoint pen.

I started to hide the letter under my shirt, but then I remembered that I was all sweaty from having ridden my bike in warm weather for an hour.  I slid the letter in my front pocket and walked back to the building with half of the envelope sticking out. I made sure that no writing was showing on the part sticking out.  Something still felt weird about having this letter, and I did not want to have to talk to anyone about it.

I made it back to my room without seeing anyone and began reading.

May 23, 1995

Dear Greg,

Hello!  It’s nice to hear from you, and I hope this finds you well.  I’m good, except there’s a storm here. It’s raining pretty hard, with lightning.

Good luck on finals!  I got my grades a few days ago.  I ended up with two Bs, two Cs, and a D.  Not as good as I wanted. I’ll have to work harder next semester.

I’ve been bored and lonely much of the time since coming back home.  When I was at school, I was used to having everything within walking distance, but we live out in the country so everything is a 15 minute drive away.  And since I don’t have a car, I don’t get away from home that much. Most of my friends from college live far away, and my friends from home are either still in high school or have jobs.  I looked for a job, but I haven’t found anything yet. The bookstore you told me about sounds like it’ll be fun for you. Mostly I just want to get a job so I can get out of the house. But I need the money too or else I might not be able to go back next semester.  I know how you feel about not looking forward to summer, being away from your friends. I thought I would have a job by now, not stuck at home all the time.

I’ve pretty much given up on finding a boyfriend.  The only place I go is church and the guys there are either not interested or too old for me.  There are some dance clubs, but I don’t have a car so I can’t go to them.

Well, I hope I’m not some 37 yr. old pervert!  Just the idea makes me sick. Would your mom like to see my drivers license or school ID?  Anyway, write me back when you can I know you have finals coming up so I’ll wait until after that to expect something.  I’ll write maybe another letter before then. ☺

Bye,
Molly

 

When I wrote to Molly, I said that I was a little nervous, because my mother was fond of reminding me that all these girls I was meeting online were probably 37-year-old perverts named Chuck.  Molly was the first person I met on the Internet whom I had any sort of offline contact with. Apparently Molly did not find the image of Chuck as funny as I had.

Molly was my age, a freshman at Lock Haven University in central Pennsylvania.  Molly had already finished the school year, because Lock Haven was on a semester schedule, both starting and ending earlier in the year than Jeromeville with its quarter schedule. (Jeromeville quarters were technically trimesters; Mrs. Allen had correctly called them trimesters in her letter).  Molly moved back home, where she would not have access to email, so in her last email to me, she had given me her address.

And she actually wrote back.  I now had proof that someone I met on the Internet actually existed in real life.  Of course, technically she could have been lying about her age or gender or any number of things, but there was a real person behind those messages who took the time to write back.  Hopefully this summer I would be able to look forward to getting letters in the mail. And hopefully she was not really Chuck.

 

I spent most of Sunday studying, although I did make it to church Sunday morning.  In the late afternoon, when I finished everything I had hoped to get done, I got on my usual IRC chat channel.  Kim, a girl from Florida I had been talking to for a few months, was online, so I messaged her.

gjd76: hi
Happygirlkim: Hi Greg! How are you?
gjd76: doing well, it’s been a good weekend.  it’s been warm here, i like that
Happygirlkim: I bet!  I’m done with the school year, back home in Ft Lauderdale, but I’ll be working at a summer camp for kids for six weeks, I leave on June 16
gjd76: that’ll be fun, that’s the weekend i’ll be moving home
Happygirlkim: Yay! Any big plans for the summer?
gjd76: moving back home and working in a bookstore.  my mom knows someone there who got me the job
Happygirlkim: That’ll be fun!  Will you be hanging out a lot with your friends back home?
gjd76: i’m not sure.  i lost touch with a lot of them when i came here, and i didn’t see them often anyway when i was back home.  i don’t even know for sure who will be around for the summer.
Happygirlkim: I wish I lived closer to you!  I’d hang out with you! ;)
gjd76: that would be fun!
Happygirlkim: I think you’d like my friends!  You could come to the beach with us, we’d build a bonfire and stay up late just talking…
gjd76: :)
Happygirlkim: Maybe someday!
gjd76: hey, random thought, can i call you?

I typed that last line quickly and pressed Enter before I could talk myself out of it.  It was a sudden fleeting thought that passed through my mind, and it wouldn’t hurt to ask.  Now that I had gotten a letter from Molly, it seemed less scary to try to communicate with these girls from the Internet in other ways.

Happygirlkim: Sure!  Did you mean right now?
gjd76: sure, it’s sunday afternoon and long distance calls cost less on the weekend
Happygirlkim: 305-555-0115
gjd76: great! let me get off here, i’ll call you in just a minute

I logged out and disconnected.  Back in 1995, people connected to the Internet through telephone lines, so being logged in meant that I could neither send nor receive calls.  As soon as the computer was disconnected, I dialed Kim’s number, and just like when I had asked her if I could call, I pressed the buttons quickly, so I would not be able to talk myself out of completing the call.

“Hello?” a female-sounding voice said on the other end of the call.

“Is Kim there?” I asked.

“This is Kim.”

“Hi.  It’s Greg.”

“Hi!”  Kim paused.  “It’s good to finally hear your voice.”

“I know.”

“So why don’t you see your friends back home very often?”

“Where I live, it’s kind of semi-rural and spread out.  And I didn’t really do much except go to school. I didn’t really have friends at all until the middle of high school.”

“You didn’t have a best friend in childhood or anything?”

“Everyone was mean to me.”

“I’m sorry.  And you said you didn’t have a girlfriend, right?”

“Right.”

“Have you ever had a girlfriend?”

“No,” I said.  “I’ve had a lot of crushes on girls who were either out of my league or didn’t like me back.  One of my crushes from high school was named Kim too.”

“Girls named Kim are the best!”

“I know.” I chuckled.

“You haven’t met anyone in college?  Didn’t you tell me you were going to a movie with some girls recently?”

“One of them, we’ve had two classes together, I feel like we’re just going to be friends.  The other one, she’s really cute, and she’s been nice to me all year, but she’s a sophomore, I don’t know if she’d be interested in a younger guy who doesn’t really know what he’s doing.”

“You never know.  It wouldn’t hurt to ask.  You’re such a sweetie. I bet all the girls like you, and you don’t even know it!”

“I don’t know how to ask a girl out.”

“You just go up to her and say, ‘Hey, do you want to go get something to eat?’ or ‘Hey, do you want to go see a movie?’ or whatever.  You can do this. I believe in you.”

“I don’t know.  What if she already has a boyfriend?  Then I’ll look like an idiot.”

“But what if she doesn’t have a boyfriend, but you never ask her?  You never know unless you try.”

“I don’t know,” I said.  I really didn’t know. Kim made it sound so simple, but it was so confusing and scary.  I had a sudden thought, something I had to know. I took a deep breath and asked, “If you lived nearby, and I asked you out, would you go out with me?”

“Yes, I would!”

“Thank you.  I wish we could.”

Kim and I talked for about another 20 minutes, just about life in general.  She told me more about her friends and about her summer job at the camp. I told her about my classes, exploring the greenbelts, and my upcoming finals.  I hoped we would have more conversations like this.

I have had other female friends from the Internet besides Kim telling me that I should have no trouble meeting a girl.  Things did not work that way in my world. It seemed like every girl I was ever interested in always seemed to have a boyfriend already, and without having ever had the experience of knowing that a girl liked me, I had no idea how to know if a girl liked me, and no reason to believe it would ever happen to me.  It was so easy to talk to girls I met on the Internet. Maybe I would have to go to Fort Lauderdale to get a girlfriend. Or Muncy, Pennsylvania.

Today, when kids go away to college, they have a much easier time staying in touch with their friends back home.  Today’s college students have text messages and social media and video chat and technologies that we only dreamed of twenty-five years ago.  I have found that I tend to remember most of my friends back home not staying in touch once I moved away, but when I really think about it, that is not entirely true.  Melissa and Renee and Rachel had been keeping in touch regularly. Janet Bordeaux, the girl whose mother and my mother often gossiped, had written me twice. Jessica Halloran had sent me a postcard from Guatemala.  And now Mrs. Allen had written me twice. I did eventually lose touch with all of those people until social media came along, but it did not happen as suddenly as I tend to remember. I think I also remember people not writing me because I focus on the fact that I had two new female friends and crushes who did not keep in touch.  Interestingly enough, I did not make much of an attempt to stay in touch with guys; I was just more comfortable communicating with girls, because boys were always so mean to me in elementary school.

Mrs. Allen and I have been in touch semi-regularly ever since then.  She did eventually get her email set up. She is now in her early 70s, retired from teaching.  A few years ago, the band AC/DC was touring, and she took her grandchildren to see them when they played Bay City.  I can only hope to be that badass at that age.

I lost touch with Kim sometime during sophomore year.  She just got busy with life, I guess; we never had any kind of falling out. But Molly and I stayed friends for a long time, well into our 30s.  In my late 20s, I did a lot of traveling around the USA, and I saw Molly in person twice when my travels brought me to her part of the country. We also never had any kind of falling out; we just grew apart as life got in the way.  The last time I heard from her was in 2009, and by then she was married and expecting her first child. Being a parent definitely changes one’s priorities.

Someone asked me once, as an icebreaker question, if I could have anything I wanted, without cost being an obstacle, what would it be?  I said I wanted a private jet with an unlimited supply of fuel, because I had friends all over the world that I wished I could spend time with.  It all started during that school year, my freshman year at UJ, meeting girls on the Internet. I still do have friends from all over the world. I don’t meet many people on the Internet anymore, because I gave up chat rooms in 2007, but I still have friends all over the world who I used to know in person that I wish I could visit, as well as chat room friends who I met before 2007 who stayed in touch.  And in three weeks, I would be back home in Plumdale, away from all my new Jeromeville friends. Hopefully at least some of them would write to me. And I would not be gone forever; I still had at least three more years at UJ.

1995 molly's first letter