"Happiness is the exercise of vital powers, along the lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope."
-Aristotle
My name is Ben Cain and this blog is a chronicle of my journey away from a career in high-tech and towards the classroom. I've decided that my energy and time would be much better spent teaching high school physics than working at a career in industry, and I want to document it just in case it turns out to be interesting or useful to anyone.
I obtained my M.S. in Physics from Texas A&M University in 1998 and I've used that education in my career in the semiconductor industry for more than 10 years. It's been interesting, challenging and rewarding, but I'm ready for a change.
Teaching high school physics is something I wanted to do both as an undergraduate and also into graduate school. Physics because I love the subject, and high school because that's the point at which most people are first introduced to the formal study of the subject. And that first introduction is where some all-important foundations are laid: we obviously get the foundation for understanding and studying the subject of physics, but with that we also get a strong foundation for general problem solving in so many different fields. It is necessary in physics to learn to identify the essential components of a problem and use them to learn something about whatever it is you're trying to study. So even if it's sometimes difficult to tell a student about the direct benefits to him of being able to calculate the force of friction on a block sliding down an inclined plane, I can always point to the benefits of training one's mind to solve a wide range of general problems (or at least invoke the helplessness of those who can not solve problems), which is essentially what the high school physicist does. Life is full of problems, and the better equipped you are to solve them, the better off you're going to be. This is something I've observed over and over again.
For the past year I've been preparing for this jump and we're now in the process of moving and getting ready for the change. I can hardly wait...
