Jumping the Gun (and probably also the shark) for Ten Years

Name: Becky Vartabedian - until age 22, I was known as Becky Case

What have you been up to since graduation? Family? Career? Hobbies? My life has followed fairly well the predicted path in my "Top Twenty Senior" blurb. Go to Regis? Check. Graduated just a couple hundredths of a grade point shy of cum laude. Finished a history major? Check. Finished a Political Science major? No Check. Traded that in for a philosophy major in an attempt to be vocationally (and intellectually) honest with myself. I dislike Descartes with the same passion I did ten years ago, but my rejection is more scholarly and does not include my singing the "I'm a Little Teapot" song (although considering I'm dealing with a man who sat in an oven for seven days straight, I suppose my early critique was appropriate). Became the prime-time DJ on KRCX radio? Check. During freshman year, Jon Davis and I hosted the "happy happy hour," which ran from 4-6pm on Thursdays. Dinner hour at the reeg is prime time.

I met AV in college while visiting Kent Talmage-Bowers's classroom. AV was his student teacher. We had one conversation about Chomsky in February. AV came into the bookstore where I worked once in April and I had no words - an early sign. We dated for two and a half years before getting married in June 2002. Then I went back to work at Regis in Student Life and started a MA at Denver Seminary.

Finished the MA in May 2006, this time with honors (ha!), and also picked up a couple of teaching jobs along the way. Was accepted at PhD program, but funding didn't shake out in my favor. Now I'm a mostly full-time philosophy professor (although an adjunct without office or benefits), and have returned to the fold of continental philosophy at UC-D. I'm pretty sure the second MA will be finished next December, but who knows.

I've extended my foray into the radio world as an occasional host on Jazz 89 KUVO. True to my quiz bowl roots, I auditioned for Jeopardy! in May of this year. I'm waiting for their call.

What do you miss about Northglenn? I suppose I miss the freedom to explore ideas with minimal risk. Now, every idea has some stake that must be made good on or discarded. I miss the compulsory exposure to a whole host of ideas, even though I couldn't understand most of them. (I'll admit Descartes had me on the ropes until the Summer of 2005. Having to teach something demands that you understand it - fast.)

Who was your favorite teacher? Oddly enough, I learned most of what I needed to know about teaching in High School. Kent Bowers, Mark Mavrogianes, the late, truly great Don McKenzie - all have direct influence in the way that I handle myself in the classroom. Not only do these three count among my favorites, but I owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. Any in-practice failures are, of course, my own.

If you could go back and give your senior-year self one piece of advice, what would it be? Most people will answer this question something like "Don't take things too seriously!" or "Have more fun!" I won't tell Becky Case any of this, though. Remain serious, because you'll need it desperately later on (like when you're reading Plantinga or Husserl). As far as I can remember, Becky Case had the right amount of fun while in high school. Also, wearing your brother's shirt and shoes to school does not for fashion make. Take it with a grain of salt, though, because Becky Vartabedian wears mostly black (not because of some attachment to philosophy, but because there are far fewer risks in wearing black than, say, cerulean).

What is your favorite/funniest memory? I did love quiz bowl. I did have a great time at senior prom. I enjoyed running assemblies in front of the student body, even though I had my back to the freshmen most of the time. I liked school.

The funniest memory, though, involves IR, B(S)T, and CS. The four of us drove to see a volleyball game out at Eaglecrest in Aurora. After leaving the game, we unwittingly took a very wrong turn and in about a half an hour, found ourselves driving out in the country on a dirt road. The first sign we saw said "Bennett, 5mi; Kiowa, 10mi." It was 9:30pm, and I had to be home by 10pm. All we could do was laugh in disbelief at how far afield (literally, in this case) we'd ended up. I didn't make it home on time, but fortunately my parents got a kick out of the story, too.

What is one thing you would like people to know about the person you are now vs. the person you were then? Probably (hopefully) the same thing everyone else thinks - people change. We can't escape our early choices or youthful indiscretions (however slight), but we need not be captive to them, either. I'm doing the very thing I always hoped I would - live a life where ideas are important and drive my day-to-day being. I didn't expect, though, to have the privilege of sharing this life with someone who feels the same way about ideas that I do - that has made life immeasurably worthwhile. If it weren't for him, I'd probably be singing the teapot song on a sidewalk somewhere, probably wearing my brother's ill-fitting shirt.