Michelle: Turnabout is fair. You interviewed me; now, it is my turn to
interview you. I would like you to talk about your fall last spring
that nearly killed you. It has been just over a year ago. What has
the past year meant to you with all its struggles?
Al: The fall off the deck was an accident; I
was on a stepladder staining the side of the deck. Fortunately, for
me, Ann was working with me. However, I don’t recall anything that
happened. In fact, I don’t recall going to the hospital. I don’t
recall the three or four weeks in the intensive care unit at St. Mary’s
hospital in Hobart. I owe my life to my wife. If it hadn’t been
for her quick work of getting the paramedics there, I wouldn’t be
here. I feel that my life was spared.
The only downside to the fall is my hearing for
which I have two hearing aids. Outside of that, I’m taking no
medication now. I have had no seizures or no complications. The
neurosurgeon, Dr. Kaakaji, had to take out a round part of my
skull-plate from of my head. He did this to reduce the pressure of
the swelling, drain the blood, and whatever else he had to do. The
surgery was a couple hour procedure. I was without that part of my
skull that was the size of a bagel for months. After the first
month, the recovery was fairly quick. It is really interesting that
I always thought that someone would get better on a steady upward
curve. However, it wasn’t like that for me. I would get
a little better and remain like that for several weeks. Then I
would be much better one day. That would remain level for
several weeks, and again there would be another jump in improvement.
It just wasn’t a steady upward curve.
I appreciate Dr. Kaakaji greatly.
I told him when I went for a check-up that I am a Protestant whose
life was saved in a Catholic hospital by a Muslim doctor. The
world needs to get with this ecumenism.
Michelle: Like what kinds of improvement?
Al: Wanting to do things. I wanted do things
like getting my life back together as far as exercising and things
like that. For the first couple of weeks at home, I would go for a
walk—one that would be about 100-feet, and I would come back. That
would continue for a couple weeks. Then all of a sudden, it would
just shoot up to the next level. Ann and I would walk all over the
neighborhood. Soon, I was walking around the lake.
The neurosurgeon told Ann that I had a 50/50
chance of making it through the surgery. I made it through the
surgery. The next issue was what I was going to be like after the
surgery. Several days after the surgery, Dr. Simaga came into the
hospital and asked me questions that I answered very well. However,
I don’t remember him being there, I don’t remember you being there,
or Ann being there. I don’t remember being in the hospital.
An interesting thing was that Dr. Simaga, my
neurologist, told me when I went back to see him after the surgery
that he had asked me questions to find out how my brain was
functioning. He asked me one question about what was important in
my life. I said that I loved my wife and family, and I loved
teaching. Dr. Simaga told me that a couple of months later. It is
interesting even though I wasn’t sure why I was in the hospital; I
knew that there was an accident of some sort. However, while I
wasn’t clear about the accident, I was able to shoot back quickly
the answer to his question about what were the important things in
my life. While I don’t recall the entire hospital stay, I told
anyone who asked how I was doing that I loved my family and
teaching. For Dr. Simaga, that is pretty good, and it was a good
indication for him that there wasn’t anything permanently wrong with
me. I was going to get better, and I was going to be fine. He
wasn’t expecting such a clean-cut answer, but after brain surgery,
it was a good indication to him that I was on my way to a complete
recovery. His sharing that with me helped me jump to a new level of
recovery. That even though I was just out of surgery, I was still
thinking even though I don’t recall a nanosecond of the entire
hospitalization.
Michelle: What do you love about teaching?
Al: I think that what I love about teaching
and what makes me a good teacher is that I take very seriously
teaching. Many professors are IQ-wise far superior to me. However,
I know my subject matter, and I love the process of teaching. What
makes me good was my childhood experiences in education. I grew up
in Pennsauken, NJ, which in that time, just after WWII, was an
average community with an average school system. I didn’t have any
problems academically. Nevertheless, my father had wanted to go to
college, but he wasn’t able to go because of the war. I was born
during the war, and my middle brother came soon after the war was
over. My father just wasn’t able to work fulltime and to afford two
young children, a wife, and go to college all at the same time.
However, it was his determination to make sure that he made college
available for all his children. He received a promotion at the
insurance company where he worked, but that opportunity forced him
to move from Pennsauken to Pittsburgh in the early 50s. He took
that opportunity, because it was a promotion. So we moved to Mt.
Lebanon, which was a southern suburb of Pittsburgh. Mt. Lebanon was
an extremely wealthy area well beyond our financial means, but he,
his wife, and his family struggled economically to live there.
Mt. Lebanon was at that time the 19th
best school system in the entire country. My father was more than
happy to live there so that his children would get a superlative
education in the Mt. Lebanon schools. What he didn’t realize was
that we had gone from an average school system to one of the very
best in the country. That educational jolt really knocked my socks
off academically along with my brother. We weren’t used to that
kind of excellence in education. I was in 5th grade when
we moved. I wasn’t prepared for what was expected of me. I was
able to get through school with Cs and Bs. I was not where I should
have been, and I wasn’t where all my friends were who had always
attended Mt. Lebanon schools. Many of my professors in high school
had doctorates. I didn’t think that I wasn’t smart, but I knew that
education wouldn’t come easy. Therefore, I played it safe...I didn’t
really try. I just wasn’t going to put a lot of effort into
something that seemed like a dead-end street to me.
Michelle: Why a dead-end street?
Al: The idea was that in Mt. Lebanon everyone
was going to go to college. I was willing to go to college. I knew
that I wanted to go to school, but I wasn’t putting the effort into
it that most of the students I knew were putting in. Mt. Lebanon
was so far ahead of other schools back then. They were teaching
college level classes in high school, which isn’t uncommon now, but
back then, it was quite rare. Everyone that I knew was taking at
least one or two college level classes in their senior year of high
school. That was how Mt. Lebanon ran its high school. That was
just the mentality of the entire school system. They were offering
the best to the brightest kids around, but I was a kid from
Pennsauken who hadn’t spent his entire life there getting their
superlative education. I got there at the end of my 5th
grade. It was hard, and it taught me the wrong information about
who I was. I wasn’t like the other kids at Mt. Lebanon. The kids
with whom I went to school were children of CEO’s of big corporation
and other top-executives. So I was what I considered an average
student in what was a very wealthy and very educated elite school
system. After graduating from high school, I went to Muskingum
College. There I was a halfway decent student but still was getting
Cs and Bs and a handful of As. I went to graduate school in
Pittsburgh and did the same there also.
![](IMG_0981.JPG)
Michelle: Was it because you weren’t putting in the effort or did you just not
understand?
Al: I put in some effort to get by, but it
didn’t seem like it paid off. So I didn’t spend a lot of time
putting the effort in. Again, it seemed like a dead-end street to
me. I was so used to the reality that all the students that I knew
had parents who had been to college. Because of that, they were,
from my viewpoint, super students. There were some students that
would goof-off. However, all my friends were exceptional students.
I went through four years of college and three years of graduate
school with mostly Cs and Bs and the occasional A. Then I went to
my work-a-day life. Halfway through that life, I woke-up
academically and educationally to the need of a good education and
more education. So went back to get my doctorate. By then, I had
realized that I needed more education. It woke me up, and I
graduated at the top of my class with honors.
Michelle: What
made you realize you needed more education?
Al: Because I wanted to succeed at a higher
level. I wanted more job opportunities. And I knew that the only
way to do that is to prove to yourself educationally. So I went and
got my doctorate. That coming of age took me almost twenty years to
wake-up. When I woke-up, I realized that I wasn’t dumb, I wasn’t
lazy, and I understood why I had suffered and stalemated much of my
education in high school, in college, and in graduate school.
Another thing, for which I am very grateful,
was a college professor who really gave me an opportunity to do well
in education. His name was Louie Palmer. He taught, what was called
back at Muskingum, The Arts. It was an art history class of five
hours for two semesters. Those ten hours in my junior year planted
the seeds for me and teaching. I did well in that class—well enough
that he asked me to help him teach subsections the following year.
I became his teaching assistant. Students would attend three large
lectures weekly and then have two smaller subsections. So I would
teach a half-dozen subsections a week. In fact, for that year when
I was a senior, I wrote all the midterms and the finals and taught
the subsections. That had a profound effect upon me. I was
teaching students who were contemporaries of mine. It was a hoot.
It was also the first time a professor ever said to me, "You know,
you are really good at teaching." He gave me the opportunity to
teach without any testing of me to find out if I could do it or
not. In fact, it still intrigues me that he would trust me that
much. He must have seen something. I was a homecoming committee
chairperson, I taught, and those were probably the best two things I
did in college.
Michelle: Because of how it made you feel?
Al: Yes, it was really the first time that I
really felt good about education. It started to give me that kind
of feeling that all my friends had back at Mt. Lebanon, and that I
had missed for the years prior to that teaching experience. So I
love teaching and taught The Arts for a whole year. I can’t
remember what I was paid back in those days. It was a several
hundred dollars a semester, which was good money back then.
However, I would have done it for free. It was the most valuable
lesson that I ever learned. I owe Louie so much. He took classes
to Florence, Italy between semesters. I used to babysit for his dog
and live in his house when he was away. Louie changed my life.
After I got out of graduate school, I went to Scotland and took a
year of graduate study there, but there was also another reason to
go overseas. I wanted to see and visit in person what I had learned
and then about which I had taught in The Arts. I went to school at
New College in Edinburgh, Scotland for a year. In the summer before
and the summer after, I went through all Western Europe and parts of
Central Europe in large part to see firsthand the buildings,
paintings, and sculptures, which I knew so well from The Arts. It
was a great experience for me, and I owe Louie a great deal of
thanks for helping me on my way.
So what I learned about myself and about
education is critical for the way I view teaching. Not everybody in
my classes are going to be straight A students. Some of them are
working and many of them are as I was before I turned my educational
life around. That is the great thing about teaching; you have an
opportunity to turn students onto learning students. I guess that I have
become a Louie Palmer to another generation of students. You have
the opportunity to save somebody from wasting away twenty years of
his or her life.
Michelle: So
how do you think you can do that, or how do you do that?
Al: Many times, I tell them the story that
about my educational history. I’ll often begin my classes telling
that story when I introduce myself. I say to them that I graduated
at the top of my class when I was getting my doctorate. Then I ask
if they are impressed. They honestly are somewhat surprised and
delighted. Then I add that it is interesting, because, when I was
getting my bachelors and my masters, I was getting Cs and Bs and
couple As. The thing that motivates me about teaching is that I
don’t want other students to have to go through wasting 20-years by
hitting their heads against a brick wall. That desire of mine will
keep me teaching forever. I woke up, and I don’t want other
students to have to wake up midway through their lives. So I give
them an opportunity. I tell them what they have to do in class.
Here is the syllabus, here is the grading system, here is what you
are expected to do, and here are the threaded discussions online.
Now, you are either going to be following my instructions or you
won’t. However, you have a choice, but if you don’t follow my
instructions, you will waste 20-years of your life as I did. That
does wake-up some students.
![](IMG_0974.JPG)
Michelle: What specifically do you want them to take away from your class?
Al: I tell them there are two grades that they
are going to get for their class. The one that goes to the
registrar that I don’t care about at all. I tell them that five
years from now, you will forget the grade you got, and in ten years
from now, you will forget the class. However, the grade that I care
you get will make all the difference in your life and work. I want
them to take from this class lessons that will make a difference in
both their professional and personal lives. I want them to take
away something that will help them change, motivate, and strategize
in your workplace or home.
For example, I teach an art history class.
How’s that for a surprise? In the class, they have to write a
twelve-page paper about an artist of their choice. However, all art
comes out of some sort of pain. Pain generates creativity.
Therefore, they will pick an artist of their choice and find out
what that pain was that motivated that person in the arts. The
paper can’t merely be about some artist, but it does have to deal
with the artist’s pain. They will learn about the artist and his or
her pain. There are two lessons there. One, the artist overcame
some sort of pain while making the artist great. Two, the pain and
the resultant drive to deal with the suffering is a good lesson for
each student. Don’t avoid pain...deal with it. You can’t name an
artist that doesn’t have some kind of pain/suffering/personal
problem, etc. It is true that there is no such thing as a great
artist that hasn’t dealt with a great deal of pain. Whether it is
family pain, drugs/alcohol, physical pain, psychological issues,
racism, sexism or even educational pain, that pain drove them to
greatness. What I want my students to take from the paper is a lesson
about their own lives. I want them to vicariously live and learn
about where greatness comes. Pain, if dealt with creatively, is a
good thing. It is the thing that will help motivate them to go on
beyond the pain and push them to greatness also. It doesn’t matter
whether a student is right or left-brain. They can use that pain to
ask, "How I can gain from my pain?"
I teach a 20th and 21st
century history class. We deal with great leaders of the world.
They don’t have to be artists to be great, but they all have dealt
with pain well. That is what dealing with pain does for the
person. If you don’t have the pain and creativity, you won’t be a
good leader. Winston Churchill became a great WWII leader, but he
came out of a painful situation of screwing up in WWI. In every
pain, there is going to be gain if you look for it and seize it.
What I want my students to learn is a critical lesson of life.
I teach a sociology class, and, there again, I
want them to do their term paper about some pain that they have and
how the sociologist deal with these kinds of issues. I have many
students that are female and/or a minority. They don’t have to look
for pain very far; they already are experiencing it due to sexism
and/or racism.
My class has now to figure out what various
sociologists are doing to resolve those types of problems or pains,
which could include sexism and racism. They are given a golden
opportunity to learn in the classroom something that pertains to
their real world. If they do what is expected, they will get an A
or B. However, the grade that is most important will be given to
them out in the world. What I really want them to do is to learn a
problem-solving strategy. They can take what they learn in the
class and apply it to their real world. Instead of merely
complaining and suffering, deal with the issue. Research what
others suggest. However, I want them to be proactive. Address the
problem and deal with it. Many of these classes are taken because
they are required courses to graduate. From me, they are learning
to deal their problems head on and not merely to avoid them. If
they learn that lesson, they will be building the foundation for
their greatness. And I think that is real teaching.
Michelle: Do you have any antic dotes about any particular students that really
got it?
Al: I was teaching a psych class sometime ago,
and the class was taking a midterm. I was walking around the room
keeping an eye on the students while they took the test. I passed a
guy who hadn’t written anything on his test paper. I came back
fifteen minutes later, and he still hadn’t answered a single
question. I said to him
that we only have a little time left, and he had better get
going and start writing. At the end of the class, he gave me
his test, and he had written something down. He had written the date
next to his name. I asked him what had happened. He replied that
he was from Gary, IN. I said, "You forget that I’m from Crown
Point, IN, so what? He said that he never learned how to study. I
asked whether he had read the chapters of the book from which I had
written the midterm questions? He said that he had, and he showed
me his book. He had highlighted every word in the first half
of the book. I asked where he had learned that skill. He said he had never
learned it; he just figured that was the way to learn.
I helped him the rest of the semester. He
wound bringing up his F to a B-. That was remarkable. He turned
his life around. The kid just happened to be another Al Campbell.
He came from inner city school that really didn’t teach very much,
but he had the brains. However, he didn’t have the guts and the
understanding that he needed. Once he was given a little bit of
help, the kid accelerated.
During that semester, Ann and I happened to be
going to a movie that I really didn’t know much about it other than
Sean Connery was in it. It was called Finding Forrester. We
weren’t into the movie very long before Ann nudged me and said,
"That is you and your student; isn’t it? You are Forrester, and he
is Jamal." I told the student to see the movie when I saw him the
next time. In the meantime, I had asked a friend who managed a
theater to give me the poster of the movie. I was going to frame it
and put it in my office. The following week I get a note in the
mail. It was that student. He started his thank-you note by
writing, "Dear Forrester". He wrote a nice note and signed it
"Jamal". I had the note framed at the bottom of the movie poster.
I have all my students see that movie or The
Emperor’s Club. Both of them were about teaching situations
with students—some who get it and some who don’t. All my students
have to write a two-page paper, for which they get no credit, but I
tell them that if they don’t get the paper in that I will forget to
enter their course grade with the registrar. The title of their
paper is "Why in the Hell Does Campbell Want Me to See This Film?"
Both those films raise important questions about teaching,
education, and the student.
Michelle: What frustrates you about teaching?
Al: I think that it is my failure to wake-up
everybody. If you look at my student evaluations, they are
generally exceptional. However, since they are so exceptional, I
believe that I am good at teaching. I don’t understand why I can’t
wake-up everyone. I have a story; it is not that I am the golden
child of education. It is just that I have learned an important
lesson about teaching—an important lesson about the learning
process. I feel that I have failed students if they don’t wake-up
now and shortcut wasting their lives. That frustrates me. It
frustrates me when students plagiarize. Plagiarism is a theme that
runs through both movies. When I was in high school, college, and
graduate school, I was smart enough to know not to cheat. I knew
that we couldn’t write as well as any of the textbooks. However,
nowadays, some students think that they can. When the paper is
written better than I could write it, it is a sign of cheating.
That frustrates me, because the student is learning the wrong lesson
when he or she plagiarizes a paper. That is a bad lesson that they
learn, and they will take it with them into the world.
Michelle: What
specifically bothers you about it? Is it that they are not putting
forth the effort or lying about it?
Al: Both. In addition, I have told them not
to do it, and it is not going to help them. It is going to be
detrimental to them in life beyond the ivy-covered walls of school.
I am serious about that. I can understand why some students are
tempted to cheat, but it will hurt them both while in school and
when they get out into the world. I went to school; I have nearly
300-hour of post high school education behind me. Three-fourths of
the professors, which I had, might have been smart people but
weren’t teaching very well. At least, they weren’t concerned about
the student both while in school and when the student is in the
workplace. The vast majority of my students do not cheat, but two
or three students each term will plagiarize. That just drives me
nuts. I haven’t gotten through to them. It is not going to help
them academically or in life in general.
Michelle: You mentioned that you were different from other professors in what way
exactly?
Al: I think that some professors are really
good at what they know but can’t express it well. I think other
professors teach, because they didn’t know what else to do. I think
some professors teach because the pain of something. It goes back
to the great artists’ pain. Some people didn’t have much pain.
They just coasted through, gotten their degrees, found some job, and
taught until they retired.
Michelle: They
haven’t woken-up yet?
Al: No, they haven’t woken up at all. The
pain wasn’t great enough to wake-up.
Michelle:
How many years have you been teaching now?
Al:
Twenty years. I have taught at Purdue North Central, St. Francis,
DeVry, and Moraine Valley.
Michelle: Do
you think your teaching has changed at all over those years. Or has
your focus or drive changed?
Al: I think that I am much more in my
students’ faces about issues and see it as much more important for
them. Each year, it becomes more important that they get it and is
much more of a verbal thing for me.
Michelle: Why
does it become more important?
Al: Probably my age. I know that I have x
number more years to teach and actually live. I have to teach
and I am going to make every effort to be the best that I can be. The
students that I have helped wake-up have motivated me more and
more. It is a win/win situation. I see students that I have helped
in some way, and it is a hoot to see them and know that I helped
them. I hope that my students will remember me as their Louie
Palmer.
Michelle: Do
you think your attitude or anything about your teaching has changed
because of your fall?
Al: I don’t think it has necessarily changed
anything because of my fall. I am in an economic situation where I
could be fairly forceful about wanting to teach and wanting to help
students.
Michelle: You
feel that just has to do with economic reasons.
Al: I think that one of the things that the
fall did for me is to skate me close to death. While avoided it, in
2008, one of the things that I have learned was how close I came to
dying. And yet, I didn’t, but that has rattled my brain.
Michelle: Physically and ahhh?
Al: Physically and emotionally. It has made
me think about death. At your age, you understand death, but you
don’t truly understand it. You can’t feel it. Prior to my fall, I
understood death, but I didn’t really feel it. It wasn’t something
that was a reality to me. While I skated through my first death
experience, it has given me kind of an eye-opening experience about
life and its brevity. It also supplied me with the importance of
doing things in life that you want to do. I don’t fear death
anymore.
It gave me the freedom to skate a little wider,
a little faster, and a little different than I would have had I not
brushed so close to death. Many people at my age wouldn’t even be
thinking or worrying about death. I don’t want to die, but I’m not
going to fear it. My near-death experience gave me a kind of carte
blanche to do what I need to do. I need to teach as much as I can.
One of my deans, Anne Perry, last term called and said that she had
four classes, and she had to find professors to teach them. I asked
her which classes did she need a professor. She told me, and my
response was that I would take all of them. Anne said that she knew that I
would say that, she hung up, and all was well. So my fall taught me
an important lesson of life—we aren’t going to be here forever.
That is also why I travel so much around the world.
Michelle: How
much longer do you think you will teach?
Al: I’m teaching now about three times the
number of hours a normal professor teaches. So I spend all my
waking hours doing housekeeping, ironing, cooking.... Just kidding.
However, I spend a great amount of time either in the classroom or
in front of my computer teaching online. I will do that for the
rest of my life. Teaching is like being a parent. It goes back to
what I said about teaching and loving my family. It is the same
kind of thing; how long am I going to be your parent? There is
always going to be something I can offer to my children and/or
students. When am I going to quit being your parent? If I maintain
my health, I will teach as long as they will have me. We have
enough money to quit teaching right now. Retiring would resolve
issues like plagiarism, but what would I do? We could go travel and
I could learn more things so I could take them back to where? I
love taking pictures of places we have been and have them blown up
for the walls in our home, but there is a limit to the total
number—and we are nearly at that limit now. I am going to go out and
learn, so I can share that with other people.
Michelle: Is
that what you like most about traveling?
Al: Well, I like to see and experience some
place new with Ann. I like to see something we hadn’t seen before.
I love the excitement and the opportunity to learn the history of
the people and that kind of thing. I love to see things for the
first time; I love to go to places where most other people don’t
go. Ann and I have this little deal between us. It is called "good
trip/bad trip". The bad trips are the ones I really
love. Ann likes the good trips like to Bora Bora and Easter
Island. I like the bad ones that are difficult trips—like our trip
to India, Tibet, Nepal, China, and Mali. The trip to Africa in many ways was
quite difficult.
Michelle: What was difficult about it?
Al: We don’t go on tours; we do it ourselves.
I wanted to go to Timbuktu out in the middle of nowhere in Mali.
The only way to get to Timbuktu was to bounce your head against the
top of an SUV for hours and hours and hours. But, finally, you get
there. You don’t know many people that can say that they have been to
Timbuktu and Katmandu. Katmandu was same kind of thing except for
it was in Nepal. You can’t imagine, well, you can since you were in
Africa for a year, what you learn from those experiences. I have
taught a class in Tibet and China. I’ve been to Tibet twice along
with India and Nepal. We have traveled in the South Pacific and
have been to Chile and Easter Island. I have been all over Europe
and most of central Europe. I have been in the Middle East. All
traveling is fun and a learning experience. Some trips are just
easier than others are. In several months, Ann and I will be going
to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand in December and January.
You have no idea how much you bring back for the classroom.
Michelle: In what way?
Al: We were talking about my teaching a world
religion class. We were covering some issues in some African religions.
One item, which drives students up the wall, is circumcision that is
still performed on some children--males and females that are ten to
twelve years old. The students got into arguing about circumcision
and whether it was still done. I showed them pictures in Dogon
Country where it is still done to both boys and girls prior to them
becoming teenagers without antiseptics. Dogon Country was on the way to Timbuktu. This
is the place where the locals hid out when the Muslims came through
North Africa over a millennium ago. The locals fled into the hills
and hid from the Muslim invasion. Over the centuries, the locals
filtered down from the mountains and mixed with the Muslims. Now,
Dogon Country is completely a Muslim dominated area. I could bring
to the discussion what the locals in Dogon Country thought and said
about circumcision of both sexes. Having been there, you bring to
the classroom an inordinate amount of information about what isn’t
in the textbook.
In the art history classes that I teach, I
spend so much time talking about what never shows up in the
textbook. There is the debate about the lost continent of Atlantis
in both the philosophy of Plato, history, and in the arts. Many believe that
Plato was talking about the Greek island of Santorini also called
Thera. The liberal arts classes can easily be interrelated. There is
an amazing amount of information out there that students float
passed when reading a textbook.
Another example, I came back from Tibet and
China after teaching there. I was there for about a month, and it
took me another month to get over congestion and not feeling
well—just because of air pollution in China. The Chinese are willing to try
to stay up with the world in the 21st century but are
going to kill their people in the process due to bad health. They
have indigenous people sweeping the streets clean, but the air
everyone breathes is grossly polluted. So it is that contradiction of
reality that is China. I was teaching a history class, and I told
my class about driving on what would be considered an interstate in
China. Miles from the city and the population, there was someone
there dusting the top of the guardrail on the side of an overpass.
Miles away from the city, someone was dusting the overpasses. She
was doing that for aesthetics while everyone was breathing polluted
air from cars and trucks without proper emissions controls. The
textbook never talked about that dichotomy. Traveling adds a vast
amount of information for any of my classes. I tell them also that
to get a really good education, they will have to travel beyond our
borders. Take one trip to one place that you feel comfortable,
because they speak the same language. Once you get two weeks over
there, then traveling and learning will be contagious. Besides,
there are very few places in the world where we have been where they
don’t speak English as a second language.
We were in Egypt were someone told us that they
like everything about the Americans but the government and the Bush
administration. I replied that he should wait until the next
election.
We went to French Polynesian in part to visit
Tahiti. The primary reason I wanted to see Tahiti was because that
is where the artist, Paul Gauguin, went when he broke off his
relationship with Vincent van Gogh. I wanted to see those people
that he said were beautiful people. When we got there, we
discovered that Gauguin was right. The French Polynesians were
all beautiful people. They are lovely people, and they have
nothing. There isn’t a person in the United States that is as poor
as the average French Polynesian. We went past their homes that
they lived in—four walls and open windows and one or two chairs.
Nevertheless, they were beautiful people. I have never seen people
prettier in my whole life. In addition, they are loving and gentle
people. That is why Gauguin stayed there for such a long time.
They were indeed, lovely, lovely people. People who don’t go
overseas are wasting precious time. Sooner or later, they won’t be
able to travel, and then they die—having wasted the gift of life
that they could have truly experienced.
Michelle:
Speaking about education, what about your job offer to teach
fulltime at St. Francis?
Al: They offered me the job that would have
started in August, but then I fell in May. They weren’t sure how
long my recovery would be so they offered the job to the next
person. However, I was fine, because I was back teaching as an
adjunct in August. Nevertheless, what is more important is how I
handled the loss of the job. I would have preferred to learn some
other lesson of life. However, it goes back to art history and how artists
become great because of some sort of pain. I haven’t changed my teaching style, my attitude toward
students, and I will never quit teaching. I’m still teaching three
times what a normal professor would teach...and I still love it.
Michelle: What is next for Al Campbell?
Al: I would like to teach overseas. I was
looking at a job in Kurdistan in northern Iraq, but Ann said that
there weren’t enough beaches there.
It would be nice to teach
American students overseas or local students who want to learn. I
would also like to interview Obama, but he is going to do well
without my help. I don’t know, but I don’t see myself as retiring
and sitting down at the dock fishing. However, I would like to
teach at an overseas university somewhere.
Michelle: 2008
was an interesting year for you as far as medical issues.
Al: 2008 was not a good year for me as far as
my health was concerned. I started off the year with prostate
cancer. One of my best friends died of prostate cancer half-dozen
years ago. I went to see him at the University of Chicago
Hospital. It was too late for him to have surgery. Because of that
and the fact that all males will get prostate cancer if they live
long enough, I was pretty conscientious about getting a PSA test
annually. My PSA was elevated in 2007, and I went to the University
of Chicago Hospital for a prostate biopsy, which showed cancer. I
had prostate surgery done robotically with the da Vinci surgery
procedure. Dr. Zorn, the surgeon, never touched me with his hands.
He just used robotic controls to operate, and I have a few small
incisions, but I had the surgery in January of '08. It was a snap,
and I was home the next day. I have gone back to my normal life
without any problems or complications.
Michelle: Did it affect you emotionally at all?
Al: No, the robotic thing saves a lot of
tearing and doesn’t cause any dysfunction. If anybody reads this
and is thinking about prostate surgery, go to the University of
Chicago Hospital and ask for Dr. Zorn. Don’t let anyone else touch
you. Dr. Zorn is a great, young surgeon. He is just a sharp
character. The surgery and the after-effects were a snap.
Then a couple months later, I fell off the
ladder and that was no snap. I have always had problems with
breathing, which has nothing to do with the fall. However, I had
gotten to the point where I was tired of problems and wanted to be
proactive. Again, it was one of those times where I was floating
along for a while, and then you jump up to an all-new level. I got
to the point where I put my foot down and got my ass in gear. I
went in to see Dr. Simaga, my neurologist, and told him about my
breathing problem. He said to go Dr. Covello in Munster. Dr.
Covello saw my records, looked at my nose, did some tests, and then
he told me what he’d do. Again, it was a nice clean surgery, and I
haven’t breathed so well all my adult life. Again, if you have a
problem with breathing, call Dr. Covello.
Then I had some leg muscle problems, not spasms
just twitches, for a couple weeks. This was something related to my
fall. It was a neurological problem that I wanted resolved. So I
went to two tests that were separated by several weeks. By the time
that I got the second in-depth test, the problem was going away.
Now, I hardly recall it. 2008 was not a great year medically, but
it could have been a lot worse. I could have been dying of prostate
cancer, or I could have died from the fall. So it wasn’t that
bad...right?
Dr. Simaga had asked Ann how I was dealing with
the aftermath of the fall. She said, "Oh, he gotten back to his
normal, crazy self like he was before the fall." I took that as a
compliment. I’m not sure whether Dr. Simaga he did or not.
Again, if you have any neurological problems, see him.
![](IMG_098030.JPG)
Michelle: Again, what is next for Al Campbell?
Al: One of the things in the history class
that comes up and one thing about which I feel very strongly about
is Aung San Suu Kyi. Ann and I have a little argument occasionally
about my desire to interview her. She's afraid that the Myanmar
government might kill me if I attempt to do so. That isn’t much of a concern. Since my
fall last year, I don’t fear of death. However, the fall hasn’t
quelled my fear of torture. Having said that, there is no one that
I want most to interview...other than Aung San Suu Kyi. Looks like I
will settle for Barack Obama...at least for now.
Michelle: Why
would you like to interview Aung San Suu Kyi?
Al: Because she is like the daughter of George
Washington to the Burmese. She has guts and determination, but she
is pleasant without being aggressive. She is a woman who is in her
own league and isn’t afraid to live that way. It would be an honor
for me to sit down with her for a couple hours of conversation.
Just a couple weeks ago, some Westerner tried to get into her place
where she is under house arrest. I would love to interview Aung San
Suu Kyi. Again, it would great for my teaching of a 20th
and 21st century history course. Most of my students
don’t know who she is, yet she is a woman that has intimated the
communists in Burma. All Westerners need to know who Aung San Suu
Kyi is. She won a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. However, like I
just said, it looks like Barack Obama’s interview will be easier to
obtain.
6/09
|