If you went back to the 20-year-old version of myself and told that young physics major that his destiny was to become a high school physics teacher and that he would absolutely love his job, he would have said, “You’re crazy – you don’t know anything about me!”
I always thought I would be doing some kind of science in a research setting. I quickly narrowed my interest to physics even while still in high school. Then, as an undergraduate at Purdue, I thought the big question of destiny was “theory or experiment?” At Carnegie Mellon, I enjoyed being a teaching assistant while earning my Masters degree so much more than my own classes, it should have been a clue! Somewhere after completing my qualifying exams (by the skin of my teeth!) and in the no-man’s-land of interdepartmental work in computation neuroscience, searching for a thesis topic, I finally looked around me and thought, “Wait a second, where am I headed again?”
I saw the revolving door of post-docs waiting for a spot in academia and my friends getting their PhD’s in physics only to go off and work in banking or in the computer industry and I had a young-life crisis. ABD, I took a leave of absence in 1995 and ran off to make wine with my uncle in France. I heard they kept my picture on the wall with the other grad students for a couple of years (“Who’s that guy?” “Oh, he’s making wine in France.” “You can do that here?”)
Although my mother will remind me occasionally that it would be handy to be Dr. Rideout, I have no regrets. After flailing around in various other jobs (lab rat, micro-plumber, architect’s flunky, wine importer), I found myself entering the world of high school teaching sideways at the age of 32. Almost immediately I fell in love with the job. I simultaneously rediscovered my own love of physics and discovered the unique pleasure that is guiding the occasional, willing teenager into the light. I know those particular students would probably fall in love with physics anyway, but to take undue credit as their guide is the teacher’s special pleasure. While I was a student myself, I was always scaling an ever higher summit in physics-land (or at least trying to!) and enjoying the challenge of the next peak, but not really savoring the view along the way. Now, that’s all I do: savor the view and attempt to get others to enjoy it as well.
A few years ago, on a bad day, I shared with my principal that I felt I hadn’t lived up to my potential and that younger me would be disappointed in older me. He gave me a startled look and said with simple sincerity, “What could you possibly be doing that is more important than what you are doing right now?”
Hey, young Ken, there’s plenty of science to go around outside of doing the research you are dreaming of!
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