Humanities posse losing a veteran

By Nick Ngo

At the end of the spring term, Lynn Darroch will grade his last paper and retire from teaching to pursue his other passions in life: writing and performing jazz music.

One of the reasons he’s retiring his because he’s old enough to do so now. The main reason is he has a lot of other work that he wants to do, like writing and performing.

“I’ve been able to do both, but I want to do more of the other now,” Darroch said. “Since I’m eligible now, I want to retire to do other things”

Darroch, the instructor of literature and composition, started teaching at Mt. Hood Community College full-time in 1989. He started teaching on campus as a part-time instructor in 1982.

Before coming to MHCC, Darroch worked at the University of Wyoming for two years in the 1970s, and he taught part-time at Lewis and Clark College for two years.

“I hit every one of them; small liberal arts, private liberal arts school, giant state university and a community college,” Darroch said.

The classes that he teaches are survey of American literature, creative non-fiction, writing, technical report writing (online), and introduction to literature fiction (online). In the past, Darroch also taught all the composition classes offered, as well as fiction and a number of literature classes.

Besides teaching, Darroch coordinates writing internships for the English Department. He started the program. Darroch says that’s one of his favorite things to do, because he gets to introduce people to the field of writing.

Plus, they get a real writing job and find out what it’s like.

Out of all the classes he teaches, Darroch says he enjoys surveys of American literature and creative writing the most.

Not this term, but two years earlier the class was taught by two instructors. Darroch and Lidia Yuknavitch developed the class into a multimedia class where they showed movies, slides, and listened to music that goes along with the time frame of the literature. He explains that it was a cultural studies approach.

“I enjoy it partly because it was a team taught class. Also I like working with other faculty members,” Darroch said.

He says the students take the creative writing class because they want to, which brings a happier environment into the classroom. He also likes to be in the position of helping people tell their own story.

“The wonderful thing about teaching writing is that you get an intimate relationship with somebody else’s mind, when you read their work and you help them try to figure out what they want to say,” Darroch said. “It’s a really wonderful privilege to have that kind of relationship with another person.”

His undergraduate literature college teachers gave him inspiration to become a teacher too. “I just saw what they were doing and I thought it was a great thing to do. I wanted to do it myself,” Darroch said. When he was in graduate school it seemed like the only way for him to go.

He says the price of being a teacher is it takes up all his time.

“When you teach writing, you put in a lot of extra time with people’s work, and that has a wonderful advantage of really getting to know people and help them,” Darroch said. “On the other hand it takes up all your time.”

When he was younger he thought he would write fiction. But as he got older Darroch received the chance to write for newspapers and magazines, and he likes it better because he would receive instant readers. Darroch explains when writing fiction you’re often working alone and it’s a long time between writing something and getting it published. “Writing for newspaper was great because I can write a music review at night, file it at midnight and it would be on your doorstep 5 a.m. the next morning,” Darroch said. “That was instant gratification. I liked that.”

Other than teaching, he also had other jobs. Before teaching at MHCC Darroch worked as a carpenter, and between 1979-1989 he was teaching part-time and working as a freelance writer.

He still does freelance writing for The Oregonian; since 1988 he has written at least 35 arts-related articles per year. Darroch also wrote for Willamette Week in the 1980s and a Portland publication called The Clinton Street Quarterly.

Darroch’s other interests include listening to jazz.

Jazz is one of his favorite forms of music. He doesn’t like any artist more then the other because he looks at jazz as a profession.

Darroch wrote a series of stories of encounters with jazz musicians. He then took those stories and read them aloud with jazz in the background, creating a CD called “Jazz Stories.” A guitar and saxophone player performs with him as he tells the stories. He has also written scholarly papers about jazz and contributed them to a book called “The Guide to United States Popular Cultures,” and “Jumptown: Portland Jazz 1942-1957.”
Darroch has also edited the books “The Jews of Oregon,” “Pottery Along the Willamette,” and “Between Fire and Love: Contemporary Peruvian Writing.”

Darroch also writes and performs the music he writes about. Last summer, he performed in the Mt. Hood Jazz Festival.This year he will be performing as part of the Portland Jazz Festival. Darroch will have three performances Feb. 17 - 18 at Borders bookstore in downtown Portland. On Friday and Saturday he performs at 5 p.m. and Sunday at noon.

One of things he said he will miss about MHCC is the contact with all the “wonderful people” and mostly his colleagues.“That’s what I will miss the most, the people I have become friends with and see everyday,” Darroch said.

He fondly remembers working with other instructors.“That’s been the most fun, working with my colleagues,” Darroch said, “and teaching in the classroom. There’s some great days in the classroom.”

A great day to him is when he sees learning happening, when the students are involved and mastering the material.
Darroch says he won’t miss all the piles of grading.

“That’s the worst part of the job. The excessive, never-ending pressure of grading student work, it never stops,” he said, pointing a stack of papers on his desk.

Before he retires, in spring term he will take the study abroad to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He will make sure the students’ academic performance is satisfactory. The students take classes and he would sit in on them, meeting with them individually to make sure everything is okay.