20. Experience

I made the transition from student to full time worker right after our last recession. It was 1997 and I just graduated with my MFA from Cal State Fullerton a few years before. I had been teaching part time at half a dozen different campuses and hoping to find a full time tenure track position.



I timed it just right. The economy was in a very different place than it is today. We were on the upswing headed for the dot com boom. It was the beginning of digital photography and I was great with computers. In 1997 I was offered two full time positions, one at College of the Canyons and one at Chaffey College. I was in final interviews for a third. (Like I said, different economy). May be it was luck, persuasion, preparation, proximity, who knows but I chose COC. It was the right choice.

This weekend I am teaching a class up at a camp in the San Bernardino Mountains that the college leases for our relatively new Field Studies program. The program gives students an opportunity to experience work in the field while completing their courses in geology, photography, biology, history, ASL, sociology, etc. We literary teach outside of the box by taking the students outside of the box. They love it. The faculty love it. And here I am thinking that it all came back to that decision in 1997. What if I had chosen a different campus --one that stuck with tradition because it always worked before in education? Well the same-old-same-old doesn't cut it any longer. Humans learn best through active experience.