Often things are dry and dense and you feel like you should be the one earning the paycheck. It's uncomfortable and suffocating, you spend most of your time reading books you don't fully understand and then writing following specific prompts you didn't know existed within the novel. The lesson was so ingenious, which certainly provides a testament to his vast teaching skills. To be a good teacher, you must set and maintain standards for your students, and within these standards students can challenge themselves and their learning. I'm a firm believer that feeling comfortable leads to complacency, and this path to laziness usually doesn't end up leading to a rewarding destination. The only time I feel like I'm truly learning is when I feel uncomfortable with what's being asked of me and feel like the confidence I have in the subject I'm working on is threatened. Throughout my educational experience, I constantly tried to keep myself off balance as much as possible. I loved being a student, but being a student meant walking in the jungle when I knew my compass wouldn't work and I didn't know where the trail would end or where the lions were hiding. Being with Hallberg made me appreciate that fleeting danger. I believe what made Hallberg as effective as he was in the subject he taught was his ability to introduce risk into the course, if only to keep his students