It was my good friend Walt Senska from Macomb College in Warren Michigan. Walt can be high strung sometimes. But on this particular evening, he was frantic.

“Timmy, I am in serious trouble,” he begins the conversation.

I immediately think “bail bonds”.

Turns out, his die teacher decided to retire the day before classes were to begin.

“I need you to teach my die classes starting tomorrow,” he continues.

“But Walt, I am not a teacher, especially at college level,” I tell him.

“Look, I need you to help me. It is just until I find someone else.”

Well, that seemed reasonable to me.

“Do you have a book,” I ask. “Yes.”

“How about teaching materials and a syllabus,” I inquire. “We have everything you need. Just be here tomorrow at three o’clock. Class starts at four,” he tells me.

Deal.

Well, I show up and he hands me a class roster and a 30 year old book that is out of print and seriously out of date.

By 4:01 PM, I discovered two things. First, I was by far the youngest person in the class. Second, I enjoyed the view.

I taught at Macomb College year-round until I left Michigan for the Wild West seven years later.

Teaching was gratifying. To this day, I still get former students contacting me to say thank you.

Roughly 2,000 students came through my classes. They seemed to thrive on my Socratic method of instruction. Guided conversation to teach them to think critically about stamping dies.

It was like law school without all the yelling and intimidation.

Chrysler, General Motors, and Tier One shops like Atlas and Hercules eventually required the college to have me teach their die maker apprentices. That was rewarding.

Teaching at Macomb was the best job I ever had. There is no substitute for the gratifying feeling one gets from watching the students grow intellectually during the course of the semester.

The college also gave me free reign. Zero interference on what or how I did what I did.

It was never for the money. I donated all the money I got paid.

I did it for the love of the game.

Within weeks of completing our 1,500 hour basic training, many of us in the group of 12 were moonlighting die design work. My design company was called Stamping Technologies, Inc., or STI for short.

A typical week looked like this:

Monday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Lawrence Tech: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour deliver progressive die design package

Tuesday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Macomb College: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour creating progressive die strip layout

Wednesday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Lawrence Tech: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour finishing progressive die strip layout

Thursday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• Macomb College: 6 hours class time
• STI: 1 hour finish and submit progressive die design quote package

Friday

• General Motors: 11 hours die design
• STI: 7 hours progressive die design

Saturday

• STI: 18 hours progressive die design

Sunday

• STI: 17 hours progressive die design

The total work week was 125 hours. It stacked up like this:

• 55 hours day job
• 24 hours college
• 46 hours moonlighting

We did this week in and week out for several years. There were two key things we did to achieve this level of performance:

• Trained our bodies to go without sleep
• Created an engineering system to “put the lines down once”

Over two decades later, I still find myself working those extended hours. I work anywhere from 28 to 40 hours straight before taking time off. When we were young, we would take only six hours off. Now, I have to take twice that time off to recover.