When I was still in high school my older brother sent me a copy of Goedel,
Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.  At the time I was focusing solely on
mathematics, which made the book's logic puzzles and hefty rational bias a
tempting diversion.  I had not ever read any philosophy, and was hard-pressed
to describe what the book was even about until long after I had finished it.
The philosophy class I took at my Catholic high school was the cruel product of
an insecure pedagogical tyrant, a perspective that was more true the more
clearly my later education brought it into focus.  I had vowed at the end of
high school to never take a philosophy class again, and spent my first year of
college focusing almost exclusively on mathematics.

My college required the usual liberal arts diversity credits, though, and
mathematics satisfied almost none of them.  I found myself signing up for an
introductory philosophy class just to fill out my transcript, and discovered
two important things: that introductory classes are extremely boring, and that
even as I ignored the tepid class discussion I could not stop thinking about
the material itself.

So when my roommate tried to convince me to take a higher-level philosophy class
with him because a girl he fancied had signed up for it, it was a much easier
sell.  From there it was a slippery slope: I was a philosophy minor for only
about a week before declaring my double major, and the more I studied the more
philosophy eclipsed mathematics not just as an interest but as a lens for
understanding my world.  Ancient and Modern philosophy provided a perfect path
of discovery for me, letting me study the philosophical positions of celebrated
mathematicians.

But I left college half-formed.  I had begun too late, and while I had been
exposed to post-modern thinking I was not equipped to solve the problems of
modernity.  I graduated a skeptic, rereading Hume to try to make sense of
people and ethics.  Considering myself not ready for graduate school and no
longer interested in mathematics, I got a job teaching swimming and wondered
where to go next.

A friend of mine in the philosophy department at Linfield had always been able
to give me fresh perspective when I was stuck.  He had always been on a tirade
about Heidegger, so I decided the best use of my confusion and free time was to
tackle Being and Time.  After two false starts, I sat down with a pad of paper
and wrote a summary as I read.  It took me a full year, and provided exactly
the direction that I needed.

One thing that philosophy has instilled in me is a restlessness about believing
the same thing for too long.  I've been reading more diverse philosophers to
try to gain a new perspective, but so far none has shaken, or even developed,
the insights I've gained by reading Heidegger except Heidegger himself.
Surprisingly, the most important thing these past years besides Heidegger has
been the swim lessons.  Having to teach something I thought I understood has
been consistently challenging--I've learned that teaching requires more than an
understanding of correct results, but a knowledge of every kind of wrong
approach along the way as well as a Heideggerian relationship with truth that
recognizes the need for individualized learning.  Working with children has
been similarly broadening in itself, showing me new ways of looking around my
own perspective and giving me a real-time view of how changes in our society
are affecting child development.

This has all renewed my resolve to become an educator in a more significant
way.  Additionally, I finally feel fundamentally ready for graduate study, to
say nothing of desperately in need of a scholarly community in which to change
my own ideas.