I've spent this last week teaching at Guru Labs' local training facility in Bountiful, UT. As in the past, Guru Labs contacted me because they had one more class than they had full-time instructors to teach. I haven't been able to help the last couple of times this has happened, but this time I saw no reason I couldn't make it work, especially given that it didn't require me to go out of town for the week.
The class I've been teaching is GL 120 -- Guru Labs' introduction to Linux course. It's a five-day course that gives the students a very good knowledge of what Linux is, how to use it, and what it's good for. It doesn't delve much into system administration tasks, but it does give them a taste of how Linux systems are used and managed.
Teaching this class would have been like any other class I've taught for Guru Labs or anyone else except that last Friday, while preparing for the Utah Arts Festival, I came down with a bad sore throat. I treated it with regular doses of ibuprofen and sudafed and it seemed to subside, but it still lingered on.
On Monday, the first day of the class, my voice was pretty hoarse as I taught, but I was able to get through the day's lecturing. I told the students I was channeling Tom Shane. If you've ever heard his ShaneCo radio advertisements, you'd understand what that means.
As soon as I was done lecturing, however, my voice disappeared for good.
I’ve spent this last week teaching at Guru Labs’ local training facility in Bountiful, UT. As in the past, Guru Labs contacted me because they had one more class than they had full-time instructors to teach. I haven’t been able to help the last couple of times this has happened, but this time I saw no reason I couldn’t make it work, especially given that it didn’t require me to go out of town for the week.
The class I’ve been teaching is GL 120 — Guru Labs’ introduction to Linux course. It’s a five-day course that gives the students a very good knowledge of what Linux is, how to use it, and what it’s good for. It doesn’t delve much into system administration tasks, but it does give them a taste of how Linux systems are used and managed.
Teaching this class would have been like any other class I’ve taught for Guru Labs or anyone else except that last Friday, while preparing for the Utah Arts Festival, I came down with a bad sore throat. I treated it with regular doses of ibuprofen and sudafed and it seemed to subside, but it still lingered on.
On Monday, the first day of the class, my voice was pretty hoarse as I taught, but I was able to get through the day’s lecturing. I told the students I was channeling Tom Shane. If you’ve ever heard his ShaneCo radio advertisements, you’d understand what that means.
As soon as I was done lecturing, however, my voice disappeared for good.
Panic set in. How was I going to teach if I couldn’t get my voice back?
More medication, hot salt water, hot tea, plenty of sleep, etc. ensued, but when Tuesday morning came around, I really thought I might need to type my lecture and have the students read it on the projector screen. I did manage to muster up a vague semblence of a voice, but it sounded like something from beyond the grave. Nonetheless, we made it through Tuesday with my creaky dry whisper-like lecture.
On Wednesday, I felt great, but still sounded creaky and Tom Shaney.
Thursday, I finally got a comfortable amount of my voice back. It was on Thursday the students in the class got to discover I’m a fun, goofy instructor. Up until then, I’m sure they thought I had no sense of humor at all.
Here we are on Friday. My throat still hurts- noticeably so, but we did it. We made it through. I’ve got one more section to go through after lunch and then we’re finished.
It’s been fun teaching the class. Aside from the brutal beating my larynx took, I didn’t enjoy the freeway commute every day. Normally, I only commute 3 days a week and it’s not during rush hour. So, I usually get to avoid all that craziness.
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