Learning Autobiography
An Element of Blank
Stop the world; I want to get off.
The words were borrowed from a poem I had written when I was nineteen-years-old. When I
moved to Seattle, I turned the poem to a song lyric, and channeling Jim Morrison, I sang these words that
seemed to define me—trapped on a perpetual carnival ride that made me constantly nauseous.
There was a time in Seattle, during the early 90s, when I was still struggling with entering my
twenties, still struggling with a growing drug and alcohol dependency, still struggling with a self-destructive,
repressed anger, and still struggling with feeling completely unlovable that I recognized in myself an
overwhelming sense of alienation. At that time, I could not adequately express that sensation, but I was
acutely aware of how utterly dislocated I felt from everything and everybody around me.
Looking back, I can remember how odd it seemed to feel so isolated and alone, even in a crowd. I
assumed it was just another phase of a self-diagnosed manic-depression and eventually everything would
fall into place.
Blind mice running a race; if we close our eyes, maybe these things will change.
More lyrics.
I embraced suicidal tendencies shortly after I had discovered that suicide was a viable option—
around the age of thirteen. Fortunately, though I possessed the dramatic flair for such fanciful thoughts, I
lacked the courage for the follow through.
The closest I came was at age nineteen when I digested several bottles of aspirin after a hard night
of drinking. Somehow, I lived. I spent the day a walking fountain of projectile vomiting, but other than an
extremely upset stomach and a shroud of embarrassment, I survived.
Four years later, I was living in Seattle and imagining a bleak future where my dwindling dreams of
becoming a rock star would blossom into a thirty-year-old never-been wearing ripped jeans and faded
Nirvana and Pearl Jam t-shirts, still drinking stale beer in yet another unmemorable sports bar. Nothing
terrified me more than envisioning a depressing, unavoidable future of ultimate disappointment, but that
fear failed to offer me salvation. Instead, my apprehension turned to anger, which put me on a path of selfdestruction that ran its course for two years—days of drinking and drugs, broken relationships, heavier
drinking, heavier drugs, bar fights, emergency rooms, a short stay in the Seattle county jail, more drugs,
more alcohol, blackouts, unemployment, until I found myself living on the streets in Hollywood, California.
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These were not my proudest moments, but I was forced to hit a bottom before I could begin to
climb out, and those two years are as much a foundation for my education as any time spent in a
classroom.
...
Every direction that I have taken in my life, for good or bad, has stemmed from my love of reading.
I do not remember learning to read anymore than I remember learning to walk or talk; I cannot
remember a time when I was not reading.
I read books like they were going out of style (pardon my cliché).
I read anything and everything I could get my hands on.
I reveled in the glory of a public library. I strolled through the endless rows and shelves of books in
a constant state of awe. I would return home with a stack of books and devour them as voraciously as a
dog would a bone.
As I grew, the volumes increased in length. I fell in love with some books, which I would read
repeatedly. Some books I failed to understand, but I struggled through them anyway. I fell in love with
Greek mythology. I discovered Arthurian tales that made me dream of chivalry. I studied Native Americans
and the various tribes and histories. I dove into Narnia before plunging into Middle-Earth.
Reading became a fundamental feature of my life. I could not have stopped reading anymore than I
could have stopped breathing.
I recognized at an early age that I wanted to be a writer. I cannot say with certainty that I always
knew what it meant to be a writer, but I pursued a dream of one day writing a novel with and without formal
education.
Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing influenced me to write. At age seven, when I read
the book, I was unfamiliar with the idea of first person narration, so I thought that Peter, the narrator, was
real. For a seven-year-old in love with reading, Judy Blume did not exist. Even though I was still in the
second grade, I could relate to Peter on several levels, and I began to write my story.
I began to emulate different authors. I filled notebooks with juvenile ideas. The Outsiders was
written by a teenager, and I was enthusiastic with the possibilities. However, I could never focus on a style
or an idea long enough to bring anything to fruition. I read Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Twain. I
read Stephen King books as they came off the press.
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I read more fantasy authors than I could name, and the more I read, the more I became confused
on what I wanted to write. I read books on how to write, and every book I read contained the same advice:
write what you know.
I had to embrace an important truth at an early age—I did not know anything.
I had so many interests that I struggled with developing a voice of my own, but I continued to read.
I read to discover new worlds, both imagined and real.
I read outside while others played sports.
I sometimes read two to three books a day.
I read for the adventure. I read for the pleasure. I read because it fed my imagination.
I read to escape.
...
I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in early June of 1970. I was a breach birth, which I have
often jokingly said represents my unconscious knowledge of how bad things were going to get and how
much I wanted no part of them.
Years later, while studying primitive mythology, I stumbled onto a passage that discussed the
beliefs of several Native American tribal societies that would immediately kill a child born breach because
any birth that threatens the life of the mother must contain an evil spirit. This same policy was given to
twins—as a Gemini, I could not help but see a metaphorical connection. When I told mother about this idea
of evil spirits, and how different life might have been had we belonged to one of these practicing tribes, she
did not see the humor.
My arrival into this world must have been unpleasant for my mother, for she never let me forget the
trauma that went along with it. From what I have gathered, no one at the naval hospital was aware of my
positioning until I was well on my way down the fallopian tube. My father was absent; my mother was alone,
and I sometimes wonder if this defining moment signified the foundation of discomfort that the three of us
share. Resentment, guilt, and bitterness coincides with what one would think would have been a
celebration. Perhaps these pervading feelings kept my mother from sharing my joke about evil spirits, or
perhaps my mother never had a sense of humor to begin with.
I am named after my father as he was named after his. Under Scottish cultural rules, I should have
been born the third, but my father insisted on naming me the fourth. His breaking the rules, as it were, gave
me a name of royalty because only royalty can continue numbering. As commoners, we should have a
sliding number. Since my grandfather has passed away, I should now be the second, but what has been
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done is done, and I have grown fond of my Roman numeral. My father loves to tell me that I am actually the
sixteenth Michael John Macdonald. As I have had only daughters myself, I wonder if my Scottish ancestors
will haunt me for breaking the run.
...
I was truly blessed with parents who never understood me. Their apparent differences make up the
inner spectrum of my pendulum—the source of my mania and neuroses. My father, the rational, stubborn,
quiet man, contrasted with my mother, an emotionally charged, hypercritical, anxious woman.
I am both my father and my mother, and I am neither.
In a dry, sardonic tone that only a man bred in Boston and later tempered in the military could
muster, my father once said to me: “Typically, there are two roads—the hard road, and the easy road; you
have chosen a third that I am unfamiliar with. I cannot pretend to understand you.”
His blank stares generally complemented his derisive manners. He was capable of saying as much
with his facial expressions as he was with his words, sometimes more. The man was the epitome of
stoicism: he rarely raised his voice, hardly lost his temper, and never showed emotion.
My father was, and still is, little more than a familiar stranger to me.
Our only connection is that we share the same name and my mother’s contempt. In a nature
versus nurture argument, I would argue that I have inherited more of my father’s mannerisms than I could
have hoped to learn. We spent so little time together that I can only assume that my adoption of a similar
cynicism is genetic.
If not for my father’s mannerisms, I might have been an even more emotionally charged wreck. He
forced me to grow a thicker skin, to push myself, and to distance myself from my feelings. He made it clear
that emotions were a weakness that he would not share with me: “Sometimes, you’re too much like your
mother.”
When translated, that statement meant stop talking.
The one thing I can say with some certainty about my father is that he was never a complicated
man. He was difficult to be around if you were immediate family and great to be around if you were not. He
said what he meant and meant what he said. He was a man of action, not words. There were quite a few
things I admired about him, not least was his calmness and his consistency.
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He offered a lot of generic, “fatherly” advice over the years, usually accompanying a long afternoon
of drinking, but the only words that stuck with me were the words I told myself when I returned to school:
“Never tell people what you’re planning to do; tell them what you’ve done.”
I feel no ill will towards my father. He is who he is. Sure, it might have been nice to have felt a
father’s pride, or hell, even to have felt like I had a father, but as many are prone to say: we don’t get to
choose our parents. Overall, my father was a decent man, but a poor husband and an inadequate father.
He did his duty: he put a roof over my head and made sure I was clothed and fed. Outside of that, I do not
think he had a clue of what else he was supposed to do, and in retrospect, I cannot have made things any
easier. I was not a typical son.
Where my father was impassive, my mother was a torrent of emotion.
Her words to me were a repetitious litany of, “Why do you make things so difficult?”
My mother’s world could be shaken by a butterfly’s flatulence in a hurricane. She was a
perfectionist with an obsessive-compulsive disorder before OCD was so defined. Every item in the house
had its proper place. She ran the house with a controlled pitch of insanity that followed strict schedules and
regiments. If anything were to disrupt her universe, then hell would be jealous of the rage my mother would
unleash.
This environment was not conducive for a child, as children tend to be oblivious of order and
regulations.
My mother was unprepared and somewhat ill equipped to deal with children. She had less patience
than a riled rattlesnake and the friendly demeanor of an angry cat. Children were the antithesis of my
mother’s perfectionism. My mother was not reserved in sharing her opinions, about children or anything
else for that matter. She often told me that children were selfish creatures. She said that they never cared
about anything but themselves. I often wondered if she knew that I was aware that I was a child, and I also
wondered why she never added a qualifier, like most children, or some children, because when she
scorned all children that seemed to include me.
I was afraid of my mother. I loved her desperately and sought her approval, but I was afraid at the
same time.
Nothing I did pleased her. She was quick with her hands and deadly with her scathing remarks.
She could shred my self-confidence with her razor tongue without trying, and most of the time she did so
without recognizing the damage she inflicted. The verbal abuse my mother meted out far surpassed her
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bouts of physical violence, but both would explode from nowhere, which made every day living with her a
terrifying experience.
The only thing my parents seemed to agree on was their pragmatic view of education: school was
a means to an end. They saw school as a vehicle to a successful future, which included a lucrative career.
My mother wanted me to become an architect because of my ability to draw and the ease in which I
learned math. I even designed an underwater city on graph paper, but I could not figure out how to achieve
a sustainable energy.
I had no interest in architecture past my mother’s dream. I even fought a little guilt for not wanting
to be an architect, but that was my mother’s idea, not mine. I wanted to write novels.
My interest in writing drove my father into an agitated state. He threw around words like unrealistic,
asinine, and ridiculous. I think he wanted me to follow his example and join the navy, but I was about as
qualified for military life as a vegetarian is qualified to hunt.
...
Perhaps my entering the world ass first provided a predilection for doing things differently, but
whatever the case; I was a natural born rebel.
I questioned authority of every kind without hesitation or remorse. To my parents’ horror, I was a
disciplinary nightmare. I was in trouble of some kind throughout my adolescent years because I refused to
follow commands.
In simpler terms, I did what I wanted.
I was not unusual as a child that asked too many questions; what made me different than the
standard curious child was my inclination to question every answer. My mother’s favorite response was
“because I said so.” Eventually, I stopped asking her questions of any kind. My parents had set the
standard for hypocrisy with a “do as I say, not as I do” rule and I was uninterested in their narrow and
limited world view.
Life is not fair. Nothing in this world is free.
My mother doled out clichés with every other breath. I was never satisfied with these limited
responses, so I developed a knack for driving teachers and coaches to the edge with my banter. To tell me
not to do something was an invitation. The word “no” meant figure out why. I was never an evil or malicious
child, but my frequent behavior issues made me feel like I was the worst kid in the world.
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I often wondered if my parents found me somewhere, or perhaps they stole me. Any scenario
would have been preferable to existing in a home where everything I did was wrong.
School was no better than home. I was never the kind of person that did things for the sake of doing them.
School felt like a redundant series of useless activities designed to siphon any and all creativity out of me.
Socially, I got along fine with peers; however, I never became close to anyone. I was always the
third wheel to sets of best friends. Something in me kept me on the outside, and no matter how I tried, I
never seemed to fit in. Some of these feelings sprang from being a military brat. We moved a lot when I
was young.
I was an awkward child dealing with severe self-esteem issues. I created a defense mechanism
through humor. Unintentionally, I became a class clown. I was quick-witted and capable of imitating people
and voices, and nothing can make someone feel more accepted than laughter. I assumed a role to keep
others at a distance, and I did so by the third grade. It was easier to pretend that I was happy and fun than
to face how miserable I was inside.
Underneath a burgeoning pseudo-gregarious façade, I felt my misery turning to rage. There was a
shadow of anger that boiled beneath the skin. I was angry at my parents. I was angry at teachers. I was
angry at other students. I was angry at God. I was angry, but I never understood why.
I was like the masks of theater; however, instead of comedy and tragedy, I was comedy and rage.
I was not raised in a religious house. I believe my father was raised Catholic, but we never followed
a ritual of any kind. The only Bible I had ever seen was a children’s Bible that told the stories of Genesis
and the story of Jesus. I started to develop an antagonistic view of religion. I oversimplified my beliefs: if
God could let a child like me suffer in solitude and loneliness, then God was not a good thing.
At the age of ten, I explained to my teacher that science gave us all the answers we needed, and if
science could not figure the answer out, we left it to God. Furthermore, the more science discovered, the
less there was for God to do. Nietzsche would have been proud. This conversation taught me to keep my
ideas about religion to myself. I discovered that atheist views were equivalent to most as un-American
views, which just made me angrier.
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Overall, my formative years worked to create a split-personality that would remain with me for
years. I loathed school and everything that went along with it. The classes bored me. Teachers infuriated
me. My peers were strangers that I was forced to associate with. I was never good at sustaining superficial
acquaintances, and ironically, I never wanted to share anything deeply with anyone. I could not stand
being alone, and I could not tolerate being around people. By the time my parents’ marriage failed, I was
living in a nightmare where the conditions were a prison of intolerance and freedom was an open rebellion
against everyone around me.
The only positive thing I can say about my childhood is that lasted only as long as it did.
...
Because my father was absent most of my life, I looked to literature, films, and music for male role
models. Books were filled with characters worth admiring: Huck Finn, Sir Gawain, Dean Moriarty, Billy
Pilgrim, Perseus, Kilgore Trout, and etc. Films brought those characters to life, and introduced new
characters. Of all the male role models I chose to emulate, musicians inspired me the most. I had not lost
my desire to write, but when I was forced to be around people, I emulated David Bowie, John Lennon,
Elvis, and later Jim Morrison, who would become my greatest inspiration and my initial connection to the
Beatniks.
I had heroes.
At an early age I started to worship romantic figures, especially Peter Pan and Robin Hood. The
Knights of the Round Table filled my dreams, and I yearned for a world of chivalry and adventure. I wanted
to be a knight, to go on a quest, to have a meaning.
My older cousins gave me a chest filled with comic books when I was six-years-old. Batman and
Spider-Man became my new heroes. I climbed walls and furniture, play sets and trees. I wanted to have
special powers and fight villains.
At age seven, my father and mother took me to see Star Wars. I envied Luke Skywalker and
wished for a friend like Han Solo. My world revolved around everything Star Wars. My first crush was on
Princess Leia. My room was filled with toys and posters and comic books. As a child, I lost myself in
dreams of high adventure.
I imagined a world where actions mattered, and the good versus evil concept was clearly defined.
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From age ten until fourteen I started to expand my reading tastes. I still devoured fantasy books,
but I was introduced to a twisted type of story found in Stephen King’s novels. I wanted to be Stephen King.
I wanted to write as he wrote. I wanted to plunge reality into the surreal. I was not a fan of the horror genre,
which the films seemed to portray, but King had a way of taking the ordinary and plunging it into the
Twilight Zone, which appealed to me. The only thing that made reading Stephen King books better was
listening to music as I read.
I was drawn to lyrics. I loved a background symphony of David Bowie, U2, The Beatles, and
eventually, I discovered Jim Morrison. By the time I was sixteen, I wanted to be Jim, and that phase of
idolizing stayed with me until I was twenty-five. I loved Morrison’s lyrics. I read his poetry. I read his
biography, No One Here Gets out Alive. That book introduced me to Aldous Huxley and the Beatniks. Jack
Kerouac and William Burroughs changed the way I thought about writing. I read everything I could get my
hands on that was Beatnik related. I had no idea that I was becoming my mother and father’s living
antithesis.
By the time I was seventeen and ready to leave my home, I was ready to become a hybridMorrison/Burroughs and write a great American novel laced with Beatnik poetry and rebellious odes.
I still have heroes. I still read comics. I still love the Beatniks. I still collect Star Wars memorabilia. I
still dream of a simpler idea of good versus evil, but my heroes now are men of principles. Socrates taught
me that dying for a principle is far nobler than killing for a cause. Through Socrates, I learned that
questioning everything is the purpose of life. Nietzsche has shown me that even though I have felt outside
and crazy, I am in good company. His vigor towards philosophy is inspiring to me and made me want to
throw myself into the subject. Kurt Vonnegut has become my greatest inspiration. He fought depression all
of his life, wrote some wonderful novels, and lived his life without apologizing. He taught me to recognize
that the world is ridiculous and worth laughing about.
The amalgamation of all of my heroes drove my interests and continues to encourage me forward.
There are elements of all my heroes worth holding onto.
...
I moved from the East coast to Hawaii and lived with my father when my parents separated. I
became an expert truant and avoided high school, but still managed to academically progress by turning in
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key assignments and passing tests. When I was not surfing or chasing girls, I continued to read and write. I
developed a knack for writing poetry and filled composition books with adequate poems. By the time I was
seventeen, I got so tired of hearing my father say that he could not wait until I was eighteen and out of his
house that I said, “Why wait?” I took a GED test, dropped out of school, and moved out on my own. I refer
to my early adulthood as my eleven-year hiatus: a period of self-discovery.
I started drinking when I was thirteen. Alcohol enforced a bravado in me that allowed me a hiding
place even while in the company of others. The alcohol led to drugs, as alcohol is wont to do with most
addicts. I did not think I was an addict. I based my knowledge off of stereotypes. A drug addict used
needles; I did not use needles. Therefore, I was not an addict.
I drank in the morning, at school, in the afternoon, evenings, and every weekend. I started smoking
marijuana at age fifteen. I experimented with hallucinogenic drugs at sixteen. I was doing cocaine at age
eighteen. At twenty-five, I was doing anything and everything available—but no needles. My ride with
alcohol and drugs created a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde routine of exaggerated proportions. I was either the life of
the party or the violent monster and everything was dependent on the flip of a coin. Looking back, I often
wonder what kept me alive. Some would say I was incredibly lucky; I would argue that God keeps me
around to amuse Him.
Ironically, I was able to get off of alcohol because I was using so many drugs. It seems that I was
able to detox from alcohol while on a steady regimen of crystal meth.
While I found new and interesting ways to abuse myself with drugs and alcohol, I dallied with
creative outlets in pursuit of the ultimate dream: I wanted enough money to pay the bills long enough to
write a novel. I started participating in the local community theater. I was bitten by the acting bug. On stage
I had a vehicle for my split personality. I could entertain others by switching roles. I moved to Hollywood
when I was twenty-one, spent six months being rejected, and six months discovering raves. I returned to
Hawaii beaten and depressed. At twenty-two, I decided to give music a shot, which is how I ended up in
Seattle, Washington. After another brief seven month tour of duty in Hollywood, I wound up in Phoenix,
Arizona with a duffle bag and no money.
My mother’s sister, whom I had never previously met, allowed me to stay with her for a few weeks.
I chose Phoenix because that was where my mother was from. A part of me wanted to understand who she
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was, so I figured returning to her home front might explain some of her characteristics. Intuitively, I
recognized that my anger stemmed from my feelings towards my mother. I was angry at her—livid.
However, that repressed anger gnawed away at me and turned into guilt. The only way I could think to find
inner-peace was to find peace with my mother.
In Phoenix, I quit using. I had grown tired of feeling empty and angry, and I knew that drug and
alcohol abuse had not helped me in any viable way. I came to terms with being an addict. I made a
decision not to be controlled by my addiction and I quit. As soon as I began my sobriety, I realized that I
had stunted my maturity. I was operating at the level of a seventeen-year-old in a twenty-five-year-old body.
I took two menial restaurant jobs, worked days and nights and began to rebuild my life.
Within the first two weeks of my new life, feeling defeated and exhausted, I can remember falling to
my knees with tears uncontrollably wracking my body. I had never felt more scared or more alone.
...
Two years later, when my oldest daughter, Cassandra, was born, I began to re-evaluate
everything. I was unsatisfied with several aspects of my life: I felt aimless, tired, and beaten. Cassandra’s
mother and I separated over irreconcilable differences; I was working in another dead-end restaurant job,
and I felt trapped in a life I had never dreamed.
Following Cassandra’s birth, I started to see things differently. I became aware of how every
decision I made would ultimately affect her world, and as a role model, I fell short of anything worth
admiring. I needed to provide something more for her, so I considered the possibilities. The only thing I was
any good at was reading and writing, which seemed to leave minimal career options. After much
deliberation, I decided to become an English teacher. I signed up for a couple of community college classes
with the intention of earning an associate’s degree in secondary education. Returning to school had an
unexpected and profound effect on my life.
When I began taking classes at Phoenix Community College, I felt a surge in my self-confidence.
Despite my previous qualms about higher education and my concern about repeating the same mistakes I
made in my earlier school endeavors, I quickly became “hooked” on education. I had developed a desire to
do well in school, so I made every class a priority. I understood the lessons; I excelled in the classes.
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The more I accomplished, the more I felt myself centering, focusing on a goal. My anger
diminished, and my wanderlust seemed curbed. I no longer questioned my self-worth because I had found
an outlet that made sense to me. School was not complicated for me: show up and do the work. Success
was palpable in the form of high marks—high marks I never imagined I would receive. I had found a way to
challenge myself and developed a principle that has stayed with me: you get out of education what you put
into it.
Not only was I developing a boost in self-confidence, I began connecting classes in a way that
helped me discover larger meanings. One of my first elective courses was in world mythologies. I was
familiar with most mythologies, but I was curious about an upper level exploration. This course introduced
me to Joseph Campbell’s work, and by association, Carl Jung. After mythology, I stumbled into an
introduction to philosophy. Discovering Socrates, I felt invigorated. Things like metaphysics, ethics, and
questioning everything was the philosopher’s mission. Finally, I found something I could relate to, and as I
delved deeper into philosophical inquiry, I felt a sort of vindication and belonging. I later found a connection
between literature and history that opened up a new form of comprehension. Now, when I read Edgar Allan
Poe, I focused on the time it was written and the philosophical ideas of that period to develop a higher level
of interpretation.
Every class I took at Phoenix College, I managed to connect, and from those connections, I formed
a broader foundation. The more I learned; the more I wanted to know.
Collectively, my two and a half year introduction to higher education provided me with the direction
in my life that was missing. Even though I had started school with a desire for a career opportunity, learning
became an important value, and education had a new meaning for me. I was conscious of the changes I
was experiencing, and rather than pursuing more classes on how to educate, I wanted to follow my own
interests—primarily in literature and philosophy.
Somewhere between classes in sociology, psychology, and literature, a teacher introduced me to
existentialism. Nothing could compare to the feelings that swept me into a generally pessimistic
philosophical point of view. The closest I can come to explaining my interest in existentialism is the feeling
one might experience at returning home.
When I read existential ideas, I felt at home.
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I read Sartre, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and Camus every chance I had. I reveled in
Nietzsche. Most of the teachers I worked with were surprised at how quickly I understood the subtleties of
existential thought, and how easily I navigated through these difficult and abstract ideas. I had found my
passion, or to borrow from Campbell, my bliss.
Before I started my upper level work at ASU, I switched majors. I felt that to excel at teaching, I
needed to master my subject, so I decided to major in English and double minor in philosophy and history. I
still had every intention on teaching, but my focus was now on following my interests, rather than forcing
myself to take endless classes on lesson plans and learning styles.
...
If Phoenix College got my feet wet, then ASU threw me into the deep end. My literary studies
opened up avenues of literary theory, feminine theory, and post-modern studies. My philosophy classes
introduced me to Immanuel Kant, Descartes, and Schopenhauer. I was like Charlie in the chocolate factory.
Every new world I discovered led me to innovative ideas.
I met great teachers at ASU. Because I was in an honors program, I worked with a committee on a
thesis project. I applied literary theory and mythology, namely the works of Levi-Strauss and Roland
Barthes with a dash of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung to American comic books. I argued that comic
books represented an evolving American mythology. I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of support
I was given by my committee.
I continued to study existentialism on my own and found several examples in Post-Modern
Literature. I was studying the classics like a man possessed. Books I had read as a child were newly
presented. My analytical powers were operating at a new level.
I loved the lectures in class. I loved meeting with teachers and discussing theories. I still struggled
with engaging with fellow students, but I learned to keep my thoughts to myself. I was inspired by several
philosophy teachers, each secure in their knowledge and understanding of argument. They never got angry
with a student that disagreed with them. Some of the unsolicited comments in class made me want to
scream in frustration, but the instructors were so calm that I felt myself wanting that detached security.
Even though my major was in English, my desire was to become a philosopher.
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Before I graduated from ASU, I had taken a job in the front office of Everest College, a small school
in Phoenix. The president of the school was a regular customer at the restaurant I managed and knew that
I was interested in teaching. She liked my work ethic so much that she encouraged me to work for her. The
idea was that eventually I would move from the business office to the classroom.
After graduating from ASU, I enrolled in a Master’s of Secondary Education program with the
University of Phoenix. In that program, I realized that I wanted nothing to do with the confines of the public
school system, i.e. No Child Left Behind and standardized testing, and that the University of Phoenix was a
cash machine. I was introduced to Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences and learning styles and how to
create lesson plans, but most of my discoveries were self-driven. I quit the program two classes shy of
completion.
I enrolled in a Master’s Degree program with NAU focusing on English and literature. Most of my
master’s program was online. I found some of the courses to be interesting, but mostly, I needed the
degree to teach at Everest. On a positive note, while I attended NAU, I was able to publish an article in a
literary journal, The Explicator, on Hemingway’s novel, A Farewell to Arms. I argued that Hemingway used
an existential theme to juxtapose the real versus the absurd.
Halfway through my studies at University of Phoenix, Everest College hired me as an adjunct
teacher.
As a student, I learned to love education. As a teacher, I have learned to spread that love. Being
an adult learner has immensely aided me in my teaching career. I am now a full-time instructor at Everest
and adjunct at Carrington College and Phoenix Community College. I primarily teach composition classes,
but I have had the privilege to teach several literature courses, and I have fought to design a better critical
thinking class at Everest. For the past few years I have wrestled with continuing my English education;
however, my passion is still towards philosophy, so I have returned to school to follow my dream.
I do not want to end up a living cliché of the English professor who wants to one day write a novel. I
want to develop my own philosophical thought. I want to create an American branch of contemporary
existential thinking. I want to keep working with philosophy as a student, and eventually a teacher, and
explore the confines of language, misconceptions, rhetoric, and so forth.
Learning Autobiography
My approach to education has been unorthodox, to say the least. I have struggled all of my life to
find a meaning and a center. I have dreamed of writing a novel, if not for fame and glory, then for myself
and those I love. I have a beautiful wife, three amazing daughters, and a calm that’s been missing. My
pursuit of knowledge is not for career advancement or to help the world—it is for me, and for my children.