Professor Me

By and in large the effort of this blog has been intended to focus more on what life out here is like and less on me. It has never been my goal to wax on and on about myself, focusing more on the goal of making people feel the experience almost as though it were their own. This post will not be like that.

I have been busy the past week and a half working on a side project that came out of nowhere and makes next to no sense overall. I am now officially a college professor.

Yes - you read that right.

What the hell am I talking about? How did this come about? What has this world come to? I'm glad you asked.

About a week and a half ago, a KAF-ALL email (an email sent to all US service members on KAF) was sent out asking for help with something. I deleted it, but my boss read it and forwarded it to me thinking it would be a good opportunity. It was sent by a representative of the Central Texas College - they have a program here teaching vocational skills (criminal justice, EMT training, etc) and they needed an instructor. The surprising part that just seems uncanny is that they needed a professor for their Fire Prevention Technologies class. They were looking for someone to fill in for their previous instructor who found greener pastures and left KAF. Their requirements were someone with an associates degree in a related field and 5 years experience.

I called and told the gentleman that I had a BS in Fire Protection Engineering, over 4 years experience, and was a licensed FPE - did that qualify? I guess so, because the guy sounded impressed, so I asked my command if it was OK to do it and met with the guy to get some more information. It's a paid position, but my command said that I have to donate the income (minus taxes and any expenses if I buy some books etc) to a noble cause, yet to be determined.

So they hired me and tonight I taught my first class. Coming in mid-term was tough, especially because the previous instructor had no lesson plan, kept no records, and overall sucked at making my life easier. Having no idea what they had learned and where they were, I didn't prepare anything. The class we are in right now is a class about management in the fire service and the operational side of a fire department - something I know exactly ZILCH about. Luckily one of the chapters they hadn't covered was about the fire prevention side of the department. That I could talk about and I think I did a decent job.

Oh - did I mention that my class has 7 students and 4 of them were out for various reasons. Teaching in a combat zone does not bode too well for high attendance. I also had an interesting moment during my introduction / orientation while going over the standard stuff - "Bathrooms are down stairs, no tobacco use in the building, exits are here and here, and in the event of a rocket attack we'll execute the following procedures..." Never had an instructor tell me THAT back at UMD.

So this semester is slated to end around Thanksgiving and the next class is Fire Chemistry. We meet 3 hours a night, 3 times a week, although my Thursday classes are cut short by my need to go attend a painful 2+ hour meeting with the big-wigs. Depending on how the rest of this course does to my sanity, health, and regular work load - maybe I'll teach the next one. I know I'd be ALL over that class, and have already asked if I can do labs, to include the gratuitous burning of whatever I can find - in the name of science, of course!

So there you have it - I am now a college professor. Teaching things about fire. In Afghanistan. My life is a strange, strange thing.