1 July 2005

With Dad's retirement last month, I checked the Bates College website and found that two of my favorite teachers from my days there are retiring this year as well.

On the right, Marion Anderson was my music theory teacher freshman year. It was a fun class and I did pretty well, thanks to my good musical ear. In fact, oftentimes I thought my ear was too good, and I really didn't learn much at all. For the next three years, Professor Anderson hounded me about joining the school chorus, but I persisted with excuses about time and dedication to the jazz band blah blah blah. Now that I look back, I think I should have taken his advice. It would have been fun.

On the left is Dick Williamson, whom I did not discover until the last semester of my senior year. He's one of the best teachers I've ever had and I was lucky enough to have ended up in his french class. After taking french from 1st grade through 10th, I dropped the subject for the next six years, only to rediscover my love for the language during my last few months at Bates. I think it was Professor Williamson's enthusiasm that gave me incentive to learn japanese, spanish, and sign language later in my life. Sign language was a pleasant diversion and an A on my transcript during grad school at Purdue. Spanish and japanese were fun to learn in the months prior to my trips to Puerto Rico and Tokyo, where I was actually able to communicate with the people in each place. Unfortunately, I have completely forgotten all those languages and most of the music theory that I ever learned, but it's the pleasure in learning and the people we encounter while learning that makes life good.

DWL