Lunched with David at the Italian Villa. He is deeply interested to learn Unix, and brought a notebook with him so he could write down command lines as they were explained.

At dinner, Gabe and I discussed his resumé. He is a sharp guy who is looking to expand his array of marketable skills, and he has taken some programming courses, so I recommended that he take two hours and learn the basics of HTML. When he finished the online tutorial (the same one I learned HTML from, four years ago!), I fielded his questions, then walked him through making a basic Web page and uploading it to a server.

When I was growing up, there was a question that really irked me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” One reason it bothered me is that the poser of the question invariably expected my answer to be a profession, whereas I wanted to give a list of adjectives. Another reason is that I didn't think it made sense to work at one profession for one's whole life, when there are so many interesting ones. But when it came time to respond, one of my most common answers was “teacher”. I have, I think, done well by this statement.

I love teaching. I am not consistently good at it yet. But explaining ideas to people, for me, is almost as gratifying as applying those ideas. Teaching is not so much a profession, or even a calling, as it is an approach. When you encounter a situation in which a colleague or friend does not understand something you do, you can either ignore it, or tell him enough to get by, or try to share all of your knowledge. If you make a habit of sharing, then you are a teacher.