Braden Mechley Department: Classic-Professor Years with Upward Bound: First year I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and went to college in Worcester, Massachusetts before coming to Seattle to get my M.A. and Ph.D. in Classics; as of this summer, I'll have finished all that and be on my way teach at Davidson College in North Carolina.  When I'm not reading Latin and Greek, you can find me record shopping, at the movies (something I'll miss most about Seattle: it's a great movie town!) or attending some theater or opera performance.

Tell one funny event that happened in your life.

My senior year of college, I played the role of Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance; the theater was acoustically bad, so we had to wear body mikes--a combination of a small mike wired sown to an electronic unit you'd strap somewhere around your waist.  Well, on opening night, I marched out to perform my famous and difficult opening "patter song"--and the unit went swinging off my waist and flying all around me (since the wire was still connected to the little mike).  Thank goodness I caught it in time!

Why did you decide to join the program?

Although I'm making my career teaching college students, I've wanted to be a teacher for a really long time, and once I thought I wanted to be a high school teacher. This program gave me a chance to interact with teenagers, and I'm glad; I only wish our meetings were smaller, so I could get to know everyone individually the way I do in a class of twenty college students...

What do you think about the students in the program?

I'm most impressed with how alert and lively they are at 8:00 in the morning--most of them seem to be paying better attention than a lot of the college students I've taught in lecture halls! I hope they don't lose their wonderful energy and interest when they come to the University of Washington (if the U is lucky enough to get them).