Chapter IX: Ed Taughtauer Meanwhile, Mitchell Mitkin tried to live. He was the youngest science teacher in his school but this was the least of his problems. Internally he was at war. For most of his senior year at Columbia, he had looked forward to teaching in a tough, inner city high school, romanticizing the impact he would make and the kids he would meet. He looked forward to the curriculum, to teaching science and the tangible world of empirical data. His father had looked forward with him; before his death he shared all his fondest memories of youth. “Teaching,” his father told him, “taught me about myself.” It was cliché but true. Mitchell Mitkin was learning a great deal about himself, none of it particularly pretty. He was wrought with abysmal emotion, a cocktail of polarities; one day he was lethargic, the next frantic. And he was skeptical. Trite lessons about cells and gravity, about “life’s little building blocks,” were suddenly impossible. Inertia became familiar while gravity became so tediously heavy that he imagined he might scream out in class one day. In short, he mourned his father by bemoaning his work. He became cagy.
3Souls: Chapters IX & X
3Souls: Chapters IX & X
3Souls: Chapters IX & X
Chapter IX: Ed Taughtauer Meanwhile, Mitchell Mitkin tried to live. He was the youngest science teacher in his school but this was the least of his problems. Internally he was at war. For most of his senior year at Columbia, he had looked forward to teaching in a tough, inner city high school, romanticizing the impact he would make and the kids he would meet. He looked forward to the curriculum, to teaching science and the tangible world of empirical data. His father had looked forward with him; before his death he shared all his fondest memories of youth. “Teaching,” his father told him, “taught me about myself.” It was cliché but true. Mitchell Mitkin was learning a great deal about himself, none of it particularly pretty. He was wrought with abysmal emotion, a cocktail of polarities; one day he was lethargic, the next frantic. And he was skeptical. Trite lessons about cells and gravity, about “life’s little building blocks,” were suddenly impossible. Inertia became familiar while gravity became so tediously heavy that he imagined he might scream out in class one day. In short, he mourned his father by bemoaning his work. He became cagy.