Hannah and her mother.

It's no surprise that in approximately 23 years of living, life lessons have been dropped on me consistently, as they should. Sometimes we learn first-hand: like don't hang around dogs with notorious reputations or not to mix hard liquor with beer with pizza with wine. Other times, we learn by example, hopefully from a safe distance, acknowledge the lesson and keep going.

In March of 2004, I was at the end of my first art school tenure. I felt that my life in Minneapolis had stagnated, and I walked the line everyday between staying in MPLS and moving to Austin, TX. Everyday was more of a malaise than the previous. As the days progressed, I began to lean towards the latter, and my diligence in my studies and enthusiasm for the city of lakes diminished to all-time lows.

It was in these final weeks of that semester that I happened to witness a sight, so profound in it's sickly attrociousness it still pains me to this day. Call it a low-level traumatization, if you will, but acknowledge the moral within this story, and may it's bitterness and self-torment never become your companions.

I had registered for a required course that was called, if my memory serves me correctly, 'Theories and Practices of Computer Learning'. The purpose of the course was to put to good use my developed skills of interactive media combined with my ability to wield aesthetics. Essentially, make pretty flash pages on the internet that instructed persons how to do something.

As if the course content wasn't exciting enough, the class was taught by man whose name I can't remember. I think I will call him Craig. Craig, from the get go, seemed to ensure that we were unfortunate to have registered for his class. He was in his late 40s, balding, clad in Cosby-esque sweaters, and not one to comfortably interact with any of us students. He assigned a lot of work out of the same dull text that most of his lectures were pulled from. If I had to do a free-association with one word that summed up Craig, it would be 'drab'.

I attended his class for three weeks and only completed one major assignment: a step by step guide to cleaning a coffee roaster. Following the grading of the projects, Craig admitted to the class that he was rather dissapointed with the results of 11 art kids who were dulled beyond hope forced to make the most boring assignment ever. To redirect our understanding of what Craig wanted, he showed us a powerpoint presentation of a trip he had taken, entitled simply enough, 'Hannah Goes to England'.

The trip had been to England, where Craig had gone with his wife and daughter, Hannah. They had gone to Picadilly Circus, the Roman Baths, and Buckingham Palace. It was raining in every photo, though Craig was quite happy in the photos, not quite the same form that hovered back and forth in front of the class. He appeared tired and suffering from malnourishment typically resulting from eating anything made by Chef Bourrade.

Each slide in the presentation would play a different Beatles Mp3, mostly stuff from Rubber Soul, I think. Whatever warmth had been established with this presention was quickly slaughter without mercy, as in ever couple photos, Craig made sure to note his ex-wife as 'Hannah's Mother.' At first, I didn't know: there were other things I was dealing with, and I usually used the time to space out. It wasn't just one class that this occurence was limited to, but he used the presentation in his lecture for three days. I'm still not sure what the relevance of the presentation had to what we were learning. At this point, I think I was only attending class to hang out with a classmate named Rachel and to drink between classes on occasion.

The last day I attended class in my first round of art school, Craig was all anger and spite. The man had exhibited his own anger to a room of strangers, who were alarmed and intimidated. Craig was the engineer of a runaway train, which he crashed and made us all aware of his inability to maintain his equilibrium. What he hoped to accomplish, I didn't really learn, though I did learn a couple valuable lessons: among them, never let them see you bleed. Not so much 'never', but dumping all your problems on strangers doesn't promote any real healthy dynamic for alleviating your problems.

I don't know what happened to that guy. I haven't seen him since my return. After that last class, I went to work and switched over to full time and began saving a couple thousand dollars for my move to Austin.