Remembrance of History Past: A New Hope

In my first year at Chumash, I was toying with the idea of finding some other employment. I had just learned the wonders of HyperCard, a relatively easy and primitive multimedia authoring tool for Macintosh computers, and had created a number of Drama-related teaching stacks. But what I could really envision was a multimedia unit on Shakespeare, complete with breakdowns of all the plays, coupled with in-rehearsal excerpts of the plays (all meant to show students the myriad of possible interpretations of the Bard’s works).

My frustration with the chasm that separated what I wanted to create and what I was doing grew as my opening-year Chumash frustration grew. By March--and the SAT course debacle and the nights on the bathroom floor--I was ready to hang it up.

At the end of that month, I attended a county technology workshop, where I learned the wonders of bar-coding, creating bar-codes that could "tell" a laserdisc player to play only the portion of a disc that I wanted to show in class (in the manner that I wanted it shown... with sound, without, with picture, without, using an alternate soundtrack, at special speeds, and so on). It would be perfect for classroom use. It was an eye-opener. Especially, when I sat down to talk to the laserdisc player company representative after the workshop.

He was ready to make a change in his job as well, a vertical change. He had been a classroom teacher once, and was now looking for another one to take his place. This seemed like a great opportunity. I gave him my name and number, and he gave me his card.

And I used it. I sent my résumé and called once every two weeks, trying to learn more on the status on the always "upcoming" position. By the beginning of May, he was telling me that, because of a management restructuring, there wouldn’t be a final word on the possible replacement position until the end of June/beginning of July.

Of course, by then, we had opened and closed our first production, Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park, to great reviews if small box office. I was already planning the fall production of Romeo and Juliet. I had fallen in love again with my job.

I never called back.