The Lightbulb Moment

I have the best job on campus.

The groundskeepers get to work outside this week, with all of the flowering going on. That's great. But they'll also be out there in eight months when it's snowing from left-to-right.

The coaches make a Bag-O'-Money™ every year, but they spend their days in aromatic locker rooms and their futures depend upon things like whether young Jeremy got a good night's sleep last night. Still, they get damned good parking.

A lot of the teachers are enthusiastic and seem like they are still deeply into whatever subject it is they teach. But there are a few you just know are just putting in time, now. They've been beaten down by The System and are just a little too cynical about it all. They like their jobs, but they don't love them any more.

But me? I build web pages about half the time and teach people how to build pages the other half.

Building, for me, includes researching new and new-to-me technologies, like JavaScript, and maintaining pages I "finished" years ago. There are a few meetings every month, and there isn't a lot of pressure to cure cancer or anything.

The rest of the time, I'm teaching people what I do, what's important to me and how to build better pages.

This part would include classroom time, for sure. But also a good deal of telephone support, some e-mails and even a few walk-ups from time to time. And every encounter brings with it the chance that it may end in what I call the Lightbulb Moment.


Cartoonists have for years indicated a sudden burst of inspiration, a clear thought, a new idea, by means of a lightbulb going off over someone's head. I live for that. It's something that nobody can ever take away from you. They might plow your parking space into a new dormitory, or cut your budget so you're reusing Post-It notes, but they can't make you un-learn Tables. I love that. Someone toddled into my workshop on HTML and they came away with something.

I learned almost all of what I started with from Molly Holzschlag. We'd meet, about a dozen of us, on Saturday mornings in a specific chat room. She from Tucson, Arizona, and me here in Lincoln. She'd patiently sketch out the framework of a good Web page, and we'd all make notes and try it on our own. She has gone on to write an entire bookshelf of Web design, HTML, XHTML and CSS books. She speaks at conferences all over the world and one of my little pleasures is keeping up with her—not to say stalking—as she makes her way around the globe.

I hope that someone from one of my classes picks this all up and takes it forward. I love writing to Molly after a particularly lightbulby day.

How many seeds are in an Apple, Molly?
And how many Apples are in a seed?

What started with her and me and a 56kbps modem stretches now to the Chemistry department, or Engineering, or Computer Science, or Administration—all over the whole campus, really.

And every few days, someone Gets It. They come into the classroom tentatively, as if they're not even sure if this is where they should be. And after an hour of furrowed brows and maybe a few questions, suddenly their face and their whole demeanor changes. You can almost see the lightbulb, floating above them.

I have six people scheduled for my Introduction to Dreamweaver workshop this afternoon. Someone is going to Get It, today, and another Web angel will get his wings. I can't wait.

I have the best job on campus.