Prologue

My name is James Adams and I teach Philosophy 101 to freshmen students at a mid-sized college. This is my eighth year and I am being considered for a full professorship. The title of professor means some extra money but more importantly it means tenure and recognition that I am finally a part of the college infrastructure. Sure, I know the decision to give a teacher tenure is as much political as it is academic but I would be lying if I said it wasn't important. It means that I would become part of the establishment of the college-something every college teacher works for.

Now I can look back on my career and smile. However, it has been a bumpy ride at times but there was a lot of fun along the way as well. To be sure, there were times that I thought this day would never come.

How did I get to this point in my life? Well, I guess there is always a little bit of luck when one achieves their career goals. However, I didn't start out to be a college professor. The truth is that the odds were stacked against me in many ways. After graduating from high school with a solid "c, " I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Somehow I got the bright idea to join the Army. Actually I think it was my old man that said that I needed to either get a job or join the Army. I joined the Army. It seemed the easier path. I spent four years in the service, learning how to use lethal weapons as well as how to avoid being killed. Strangely, that's how I ended up as a philosophy major in college. It came to me one night as I was sweltering in some God forsaken jungle in South America waiting to ambush drug smugglers. I was part of the Army's "special ops" team that was assigned to deal with the drug trade south of our borders. My team was hidden in dense jungle overgrowth next to a known drug smuggler's trail, trying our best to keep quiet as misquotes tried just as hard to carry us away.

It was a rare moment of lucid thought that I wondered what the hell I was doing risking my life in this low paid and dangerous job. That may have been the closest I had ever come to a philosophical thought. The answer was like a revelation to me. It seemed like most of the guys around me were crazy or at least acted that way and would have been here even if they weren't paid. I realized that there had to be a better way to make a living. I resolved in that moment of sanity to get out of the military as soon as possible. Hopefully alive!

Within six months I was mustering out of the Army and searching to find a college that would take me regardless of my academic record. Fortunately, I had a connection from a friend of a friend and found a school that would give me the benefit of the doubt. I used the money that I had saved in the past four years, plus the college reimbursement that the Army provided, to register at a small college in upstate New York. The money wasn't enough for all my expenses but I worked a couple of extra jobs and made ends meet. I even received a scholarship to stay on and finish my graduate degree, before going to work for real.

After graduation, I took the first job I could find (always in desperate need of money) and began teaching at a private all boys' high school. Surprisingly teaching wasn't all that different from the Army, i.e., working with unruly boys whose testosterone levels were bubbling over. Fortunately, after two years at the school I got lucky and landed a job teaching intro philosophy at a mid-sized college. That was the beginning of my career and while I didn't know it at the time, began my education in the world of college politics and sex (well, mostly sex).

This story is about how I got here and the ups and downs (pun intended) along the way.