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Memorable Students 

Did you ever wonder how life looks from the other side of the desk?  This is your chance to find out. 

During my last semester, my wife suggested that I prepare two farewell lectures discussing my career.  One would focus upon Memorable Students, one upon Memorable People I have encountered.  This is the talk on Memorable Students.  

This was a zoom lecture for my classes.  It was recorded on my computer so the sound is not perfect.  You may have to turn up the volume to hear well.  

A couple points of clarification.  

For those who are not familiar with Dearborn, Henry Ford Community College (now College) is just next to my campus.  I make reference to two colleagues who taught there.  

I discuss two students who were upset and disappeared but then returned later.  Both are success stories. 

I discuss two students that I did not like but who got in touch with me later.  

I mentioned an incident in which there was a bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in Berlin in 1986. That was a place where American soldiers would hang out.  Three died and 229 were injured, some seriously.  One of my students was in that place when the attack occurred.  After September 11 he began to have PTSD flash backs.  

The NSA had intercepted communications indicating that Libya was behind that attack (presumably in revenge for the earlier U.S. bombing of two Libyan  ships).  The U. S. conducted retaliation bombings into Libya.  One of those hit Muamar Ghadafi’s house and killed one of his children. Libya later acknowledged responsibility and  paid a settlement to the victims and their families in an effort to improve relations with the U. S.  In the end, we participated in his overthrow (and death). 

The more complex story is of my strangest student.  I will avoid her real name and use her preferred pseudonym, Ms. Montezuma.  She called herself The Daughter of The South because she believed she was the daughter of Montezuma, the famous Aztec ruler killed by the Spanish in 1520.  In discussing this student, I mention the Book of Revelation in the Bible.  She saw herself as a part of things mentioned in that book.  I also use the term exquisite sensitivity, meaning the ability to read people’s psyche and to feed back to them what they need to hear so as to convince them to trust you and give you what you want. (For those who know how the human mind works, I apologize for my armchair analysis).  

Note that my talk on September 11 has its own podcast.  In fact two, with the talk being in the second one focusing on September 13 and after.