Paul Gallagher
- Email: paul.gallagher@rrcc.edu
- Phone: 303.914.6100 Ext. 6123
Without fail, people find me a walking talking contradiction, a mish mash of interests, experiences, and passions. Life can be confusing and even frustrating but try not to figure out too much lest it become boring.
Raised Irish Catholic (a step more intense than plain old Catholic) in San Francisco, I attended the all boys Jesuit high school St. Ignatius. Other than History, Literature, and Creative Writing, I never applied myself as a student. Other than attending my first protest (against the visiting queen of England), having a limerick about a teacher confiscated, and bonfire parties on the beach in Half Moon Bay, those four years were largely unmemorable, and I went from the toughest academic school in the city into Marine Corps boot camp.
Despite high scores on the aptitude test, I opted for travel and, therefore, the infantry. For two years, Tokyo and Yokohama were my stomping grounds while I lived Lost in Translation. Then it was back to the States to ship out twice for 6 months at sea and travel in Europe and North Africa. During that time, my nickname and call-sign was "Professor" because I always had a book in my cargo pocket and frequently taught junior Marines, formally and informally. For four years, I wrote really bad poetry on the decks of Navy ships before moving on to bigger and better challenges.
The first was remedial English, a serious blow to my ego. Three and a half years later, however, I graduated Cum Laude with a BA in English and the first publication of something I had written.
A year spent managing a coffee house and trying to surf in Wrightsville Beach North Carolina left me missing the intellectual camaraderie of academia, and I entered graduate school and learned how to teach all over again as part of my teaching assistantship (seems starting off with a politically incorrect joke and using repetition, Marine Corps instruction techniques, were not quite the way to do things). It wasn’t until graduate school was almost over that I knew what I wanted to do, at what I excelled, and what my vocation was.
The mountains of Colorado called to me, and I moved with only books and clothes, far more of the former than the latter, half way across the country with no job or prospects. It wasn't On the Road, but it was bare bones. I taught as an adjunct for a year and have been at Red Rocks as a full-time instructor since 2001.
Students come and go in a teacher's life, but some memories and experiences resonate. No classes remain clearer in my mind’s eye than those I have traveled with as a study abroad instructor. In the shadow of Ben Bulben and on the shores of Innisfree, poetry came alive for students in a way I had never witnessed before and haven't seen since. Drama came alive in Dublin’s historic Abbey Theatre in a way reading a hundred plays could never accomplish. The evidence was in the inspiration and passion revealed in the poems and stories the class and I wrote along the way and when we returned.
Writing, literature, film, travel, teaching, and family are the passions in my life. Whatever yours may be, the exploration only begins in college. The real purpose of education is not a big paying job and a fancy car. It is a full life, a balanced life of the intellectual, the physical, and the spiritual selves.
“Me in the shadow of Ben Bulben in Strand Hill, County Sligo, Ireland. I am either about to recite some Yeats or drink that pint in my hand.”