With this first feature on my website, I thought I'd take a step a bit out of the ordinary for me and interview someone for whom athletics is not the primary focus. This special lady happens to have been my teacher for the last two years and only now that she is stepping out of my life have I come to appreciate her talents and gifts as much as I should have.

But really when you think about it, who is it that forms our lives more than our parents? Our teachers and coaches that's who. So why shouldn't we give them the recognition they deserve and learn all we can from them? My teacher's departure for her new home in Maryland made me realize here was one more special person who had come into my life for a little while, made an impression on me, and was now moving on.

So I got myself together and came up with some questions for her to really get to know her. I was moved to tears while listening to her answers thinking about how we sometimes take special people for granted, and then they move on....

Lin Muilenberg grew up in a small coal mining town in central Pennsylvania. Their family were considered rich in their town because they were actually employed. Most of the town residents at the time were on welfare, so Lin got to see first hand that the quality of your education can make a big difference in your life. I asked her if she missed living there and the response was no because her father has passed on and her mom no longer lives there, so to her, that place wasn't ³home² any more. Lin feels that home is where your family is.

And speaking of family, she is happy to be heading back to the east coast because her family lives on that side of the country and she looks forward to seeing them again after so many years living on the west coast. Lin's husband is a captain in the US Coastguard, so his work has caused them to move ten different places since they got married 23 years ago. Lin says she really enjoys the moving as each new place is like an exciting adventure. Getting to know the new area and meet new people, working at a different job and going to a new college are all part of the fun. When her children were younger she says that all the moving was not really a problem but now that her children are teenagers it is getting really hard on them to move so frequently as each move means a new school and new friends. She hopes they are able to remain in Maryland until her youngest son graduates from high school.

I have always wondered what makes a person want to be a teacher, so that was one of the questions I posed to her. Her response was that she didn't start out heading in that direction, and tried not to be one, but ended up there anyway. Because Lin came from a long line of teachers, she was pretty much determined not to become one. So she took classes focusing on mathematics and science and in college chose engineering as her major. But after a couple of years of following those line of classes, she decided she was not as happy with it as she thought she would be so she switched to biology and got her teaching degree from Penn State.

I asked her if she took high school classes that would lead her to her college degree goals, but she said she just focused on taking the right classes to get her into a quality four year institution. She was however the only girl in her high school to take calculus. Coming from a family of high achievers (lawyers, vets, Harvard business school grads, etc.) Lin wanted to be different. So when her high school boyfriend looked into going to a military academy, the wheels started turning for her.

A good education and free tuition sounded appealing to her, so she applied to the Coast Guard and Naval Academies and got accepted to both. During that time, women were just starting to be accepted at these schools, so she was one of the first women to attend. She chose the Coast Guard Academy as the career opportunities in the Coast Guard were more plentiful for women and attended college there for her first year. During that time she came to realize that the military's lifestyle philosophy did not mesh with hers so she transferred to Penn State for her sophomore year where she took math, science, physics, and chemistry classes. To me those classes sound a little scary but to her a challenge to be met head on.

In case Lin is starting to sound like just an intellectual I want to mention that her family focused on being an athlete as well as a scholar so she followed suite. At the Coast Guard Academy she was on the swim team and diving team and was asked to be on the diving team at Penn state as well, but had to decline due to the fact that her work/ class schedule did not allow it. Because her family promoted being involved in serious sports Lin decided to do something different by trying out for the cheerleading squad. Surprisingly to her, she made it thus becoming a cheerleader for a year.

After receiving her BA and MA, Lin went on to teach at all different types of places from online universities, to public and charter schools. Her goal since High School has been to receive her Doctorate degree and she is almost there. She has taken all the courses, passed all the exams and now she will spend the next year writing her Doctoral Dissertation to receive her degree. This 200 page research paper will take her quite a while to write, so she plans not to work in the upcoming year.

While Lin has been teaching us high schoolers she has been teaching online courses at the University of Maryland also. She stays in touch with high school friends through an email discussion group she formed and says a Professorship at a university is her ultimate goal.

If all this work, work, work seems like a bit much Lin says that being a mom is priority number one to her so staying home next year will facilitate that. As with her kids, Lin has a close relationship with her students especially when she works one on one with them at the smaller schools and keeps in touch with former students as far back as when she had her first teaching job in South Carolina. She thinks her upcoming move is at just he right time since she has had the same students at our school for two years now. Lin feels that it's not good for students to stay with the same teacher for too long as everyone has a different teaching style and focus so you can learn more from having more teachers.

I asked her what an ideal teaching environment is. She replied that it's different for each student. She feels this is one of the problems with the education system in the United States. Everyone has to follow the same program and learn the same things, when this doesn't always work. She thinks that Asian countries focus more on family and education and the value of them than the U.S. does. In Europe there are more options. You can receive a free education at a university or go to a trade school. Education just has more perceived value and is more of a priority elsewhere. Lin says her mother always told her that getting a good education is an insurance policy.

She feels this is even more so for an athlete. If an athlete is injured and can no longer perform, they need something to fall back on. This led me to ask her how she felt about having me as her student as I know my travel schedule has sometimes been trying for her. She says teachers like to be in control and my life challenged that for her. But she's happy we finally made a way to make it work by me taking JC classes and mailing my work in when I couldn't meet with her. She says her main concern was that I would miss out on a good education and thus wouldn't have my insurance policy.

So then I asked her what is a good education? Pursue what you're interested in was her response. If you're into sports like me, then take classes so you can be around sports. Pursue such things as learning to be an athletic trainer, be involved in sports medicine, be a journalist, a photographer--something along those lines. Take courses that keep your pathways open.

For an example she used her life. She wanted to be an engineer, but ended up with a teaching degree. But this enabled her to have her own consulting company training people in business and industry and developing distance education and computer based training for international corporations. She tried to get degrees in things that let her branch out.

When I asked how she felt not getting a good education affects a person, she says being a life long learner is the key. If you aren't constantly learning or upgrading your skills, then life passes you by and you stagnate and aren't able to keep up with the changes in the world. She says she has taken classes at ten different universities and always loves learning new things.

Her parting words to me really made me think and think hard. She said, ³ See what the options are. Weigh the choices.Weigh the costs and benefits of the choices and then make the best choice based on the information available to you at the time. ³ Simple but true these words ring out to me. I'm always struggling over making choices and always wonder if I've made the right one. But I guess you just have to do the best you can and then trust that you made the best decision you could at the time.

I am sad to see Lin head out of my life but am thankful for what she has taught me. When I'm on the east coast I plan to visit her new home and see what direction she's heading in. I hope from this interview, you've been inspired to reach for your dreams and goals and make them a reality. Remember, a mind is a terrible thing to waste......