So, there’s this guy that shops in my store everyday. Today I pointed out to my sister (who also works there) how much he looks like an old math professor…apparently I’ve said this before since she finished my sentence. I went back to my office to dig up a picture of him. Shouldn’t be hard, right. I go over to the school website and noticed he wasn’t listed…strange. So I did a Google image search and found a picture. While I was at it, I clicked back over to the normal search results to see if I could figure out what school he was at now. Turns out he’s not working at any school. Nope…killed himself last month. Jumped off a balcony* inside the school (furlough day, no one was there). Well what the hell, he was my favorite professor ever. In fact, two of my favorite college courses ever I took with him. Multi-Variable Calculus and Geometry. Reading all the articles, I noticed many of them said that A LOT of students said he was their favorite teacher. I’ll spare the details and anecdotes since we all have our favorite teachers…but I’ll bet yours didn’t bring in the guitar and play their own music…The Calculus Blues, then later notice that the Physics teacher also had his guitar that day so they stopped a physics lecture to play Brown Eyed Girl.
I’m kind of curious now, was his home life so messed up that he was spending his off days at work or was work so bad that he was trying to send a message…none of the above?
Anyways…yeah…that sucks.
*There’s some conflicting reports. All the articles I read said he jumped, but an old student/facebook friend of mine said he hung himself from the balcony.
Links for anyone that cares to read them (you won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t) and I know we have some Milwaukee people here, I’m not sure if any of them went to UWP.
Another thing I just remembered about him. There was another teacher there, who was known to be oddly hard on his students. In fact, one of the classes I took with him, he failed the entire class (save one kid…that was in High School, but taking 400 level math classes…he got an A). I and a few others re-took the class and struggled like hell to pass it. We asked this teacher (from the OP) for help and he got very strange. Saying the last time he tried to help a student, this teacher threatened to fire bomb his house. If we caught him in the hallway, he look over his shoulder while helping with our homework. If we went to his office it was the only time he’d close his door. In fact, I know, for several of the students, he found it was easier to meet at a bar after school to talk about it. Even then, he would merely help with the concepts but was extremely careful to tiptoe around helping with actual homework for fear of getting caught.
Oddly, I remember thinking this has got to be some sort of over reaction until I remembered what happened after I first failed the class. I appealed it to the teacher, got nowhere (as expected but you have to follow the procedure), went to the chair…nothing, then I appealed to the dean of students. I emailed him my sob story and he promised to help me. We went back and forth a few times and then he asked which teacher it was. I emailed him the teachers name…last I heard from him. Wouldn’t return my calls, wouldn’t return my emails, wouldn’t meet me face to face, it was all very strange. I got so frustrated that in a few of my emails I quoted the schools mission statements about helping every single student (blah blah blah) and pointed out to him that an entire class just slipped though the cracks…the next day the mission statement was off the website.
Yes it does, but to me, it feels like if he hung himself he put quite a bit more thought into it then just one day saying “fuck it” and swan diving off the balcony (and again, this was inside the school). I know this is cliche, but he was such a happy freakin’ guy, I wonder if he was always a mess inside or if this is something recent. I haven’t had any interaction with him at all in 8 years.
No chance that the other teacher that had previously threatened him, caught him helping students with homework and pushed him? Wonder if there was an investigation done.
I kinda wondered if the other teacher had anything to do with it. But any thoughts I have would be just speculation…and speculation based almost solely on what I said above (that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the situation) and it all happened almost 10 years ago. Who knows.
Entirely possible, but I worked with him for nearly 4 years and never saw him depressed (from what I could tell) and I don’t think the manic part lasts 4 years at a shot. Of course, he could have been depressed during summer breaks (when he killed himself). I’ll probably never know…unless I bump into some of my old fellow students from college that may have kept up with him.
