Student Favorite, Raphey Holmes
Pixel Journal: How did you decide to become a teacher?
Raphey Holmes: I’ve always enjoyed teaching. As an undergraduate, I majored in physics but I studied education as well. I also taught piano to elementary school students, assistant-taught biology at a local high school, and tutored my peers in math and physics.
PJ: Why did you decide to teach physics specifically? What most interests you about the subject?
RH: I love that it’s really challenging to understand and therefore challenging to teach. While I know many people are captivated by modern physics—cosmology, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc.—what interests me most are the problem-solving aspects of the subject and the fundamental idea of describing the world around us with math.
PJ: What was your college life like?
RH: I made some very good friends and learned a lot. I got much better at learning partway through, once I realized that I was studying very inefficiently. It’s a mixed blessing to have an easy time in high school, since it can cultivate a misplaced sense of pride in poor study skills. (What is this "note-taking” of which you speak?)
Maybe I’m straying too far from the spirit of the question with that mini-lecture. So here’s something different: as a senior, my friends and I had our very own "cellular telephones" for the first time, so we invented a game in which you sneak up on someone, call them, and just after they pick up their phone and say hello, you startle them in some fashion while saying “phone ninja!” It got pretty elaborate, with people hiding in dark rooms, climbing on top of doors, reverse pickpocketing additional phones into one another's pockets, etc. The second I felt my phone vibrate, I would jump and look behind me. The game got less frequent, but it never really died, since as soon as someone hasn’t thought about it for a long time, they are ripe for phone ninja-ing. Try it on your friends!
PJ: What does your life look like outside of school?
RH: I love walking, both in nature and in cities (the photo is of me in the Eastern Sierras this past weekend). I like to play music, and lately I’ve really enjoyed the math/programming problems at projecteuler.net.
PJ: Why did you decide to teach at OHS?
RH: I worked as an SPCS physics tutor for a few years while OHS was just getting started, and I gradually got more involved in the school as it grew.
PJ: What are your favorite books and movies?
RH: Two that come to mind are 100 Years of Solitude and The Royal Tenenbaums.
PJ: If you could give one piece of advice to OHS students, what would it be?
RH: Don’t sweat where you go to college—the actual work you do there counts for so much more than the brand of your diploma. If I can sneak in a second piece of advice, it would be to cultivate your friendships at OHS as much as possible. You are part of a really wonderful group.