SELL

The digital LED clock in front of me shows its 11:35, which is SELL upside-down. I just finished reading a New York magazine article about the anger of Wall Street brokers who feel like their greed served the globe well until the mortgage derivative markets dried up and reduced fortunes to ruins like a tornado ripping through the South. As the saying goes, they went from wunderkinder to pariahs in an instant. Even they should know it's never too late to sell. Some people say to get out of stocks when the market drops 8%. [NOTE: I'm not telling you what to do, though.]

Are you entrenched in your lifestyle, vested and satisfied with your life? Many people are. You can amaze yourself when you don't take life personally and treat yourself professionally, instead.

Last night, I taught a class on operating systems as a substitute instructor. First, I administered a multiple-choice test and watched the students/customers in their test-taking modes, remembering when I used to sit behind the desk and try to pick one of four selections on a multiple-choice test. I thought back to a senior class at university where a professor gave a test which required short written answers and a student complained because all the previous tests she'd ever taken were multiple choice or true/false. She felt the instructor was unfairly singling out our class with a new form of test that none of us had supposedly seen before. The professor laughed in the student's face and told her that life is tough, so deal with it like the other students and finish the test. I knew the student - she had been in a team project with me and was the type of person who floated through life, expecting answers to be presented to her to choose from - she reflected the life her parents had led for her (she still lived with her mother and worked at the same company as her mother). I actually looked forward to demonstrating my knowledge of the subject through writing about it, but then again I'm a writer. Not everyone likes to read and write like me.

Life. Sigh... Have we humans built our civilizations such that our decisions are easy-to-pick multiple choice ones? Or is life a normal matter of multiple choice, and short answer / essay questions are abnormal?

The squirrel in the yard that's running from tree to tree is not stopping to write a dissertation on the beauty of trees. Its answer to me is a series of short chatters when I ask it what it's doing in my yard, flicking its tail wildly to emphasize the point it's making.

I guess the question I'm asking is about the goal of teaching. At the institute where I stand in front of students/customers, my goal is simple - discuss an item and demonstrate the item's practical application. In other words, I'm selling the students practicality. The student/customer wants to know how to put his/her knowledge to use, not discuss theoretical developments in the field of quantum physics as it relates to biological cybernetic research. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle has practical applications for the students/customers but the memorization of Heisenberg's letters to Pauli leading to its formalization is nearly meaningless.

During the lab portion of the class last night, I wondered about the motivation of the students/customers. Some of them wanted to move directly into the lessons on using Linux while others seemed to spend time surfing the Web and not specifically requesting any assistance in installing/loading Linux.

Keep in mind that I don't know anything. My mind is a blank slate. In fact, I have no mind. I have only a set of neuronic/synaptic connections that fire in random sequences, putting false images, smells and conversations into action, making the rest of my body wonder what it's supposed to do with itself. Motivation is a word I can type because my neurochemical pathways push that word out into muscle movements and verify I've used that word in context with my training via feedback from the nerves under the skin of my fingers and the optic nerve at the back of my eyes. My ears join the feedback dance in sensing the sounds of my fingers pressing/banging plastic keys on the computer. All I can do is look at the eyes of the students/customers and try my best to discern what they want/need. I do not know what they want/need. I can guess that some of the students/customers need my assertive nature to assert itself and request that they participate in lab with the rest of the students in order to increase the rich set of synaptic connections in their brain. But maybe listening to L'il Wayne and Kayne West will do the same thing for them. I do not know.

I can try to sell you the importance of knowledge but you have to buy into it on your own. I won't force it on you. I'm not someone's authoritarian figure. I dislike the word "expert." I have a limited set of knowledge myself and look forward to students/customers knowing more than I do. A student/customer can excel without me, of course, and I hope they do.

The institute where I teach is all about being an advocate for the success of the student/customer, reaching beyond the walls of the classroom to help the student/customer see the value in going to class. From my experience, it's all well and good to have faculty who care but there comes a time when the student/customer must find a way to care, to want to overcome obstacles, no matter what the cost. I watched an interview with Dave Chappelle on "Inside The Actors Studio." Dave mentioned that his father told him that he had to know the price he was willing to pay to get what he wanted. That's a universal truth we all face, no matter whether we're amoeba or humans. There's a cost that we all pay to live. We humans have the ability to set a price and keep refreshing the idea of that price in our thoughts as we pursue whatever it is we call living. It's the value of our personal stock, if you will. At what price are you willing to sell yourself?