Microcomm Publications - Poetry: Microwave Lab

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Microwave Lab
(true adventures in teaching)
Copyright © 2013 by Dr. H. Paul Shuch

City College offered Electronics Tech degrees.
They hired me to teach classes there, allowing me to seize
The opportunity to carve myself a special niche
Developing curriculum that only I could teach.
What I orchestrated there was not unique to me.
It's common, and we tend to call it Job Security.

Business in the Valley had just started to expand
To software and computers, and I came to understand
Our courses would evolve that way. But this was not for me,
My training was in analog and RF circuitry.
So very soon, I shared a vision only I could see:
"Have you considered offering a microwave degree?"

Support from local industry confirmed there was a need
For microwave technicians, so my colleagues soon agreed
That I could write and offer classes just to fill that void --
A move that I believed would keep me gainfully employed
Until Social Security made all that obsolete.
So I was bound for victory. Or, maybe, for defeat?

I built a lab, and started teaching courses in RF
To students who were, fortunately, neither blind nor deaf
To all the possibilities there are in microwave.
Not one of them desired becoming just another slave.
My students would advance to senior supervisor's ranks,
And when they did, both they and their employers gave me thanks.

At first with nothing there to lose, and everything to gain,
I nonetheless knew industry was bound to wax and wane.
Demand for my technicians would eventually run dry,
And my department sought out other specialties to try.
Quite soon, I knew, would come the proper time for moving on --
Itinerant professors are so quickly come and gone.

But, I had built a reputation industry could see,
And I had, to fall back upon, my startup company.
Already I had hired the best technicians I could train,
So there was not a need to seek a teaching job again.
The fact is, I could just relax, and take a restful nap,
Until interest and opportunity would overlap.
So, I took a vacation, trying not to overlook ...
But that's another story, for the next poem in this book.

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