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making a good salary as a senior scientist and me out-earning him as an options trader, I will never again talk him out of quitting. If he ever has another miserable semester, I will simply say, "You know as well as I do that we don't need the money. So there's only one question to ask yourself- does teaching bring you more joy or heartache? If it's the latter, then you need to quit. Go send your boss at the college an e-mail. Here. Want to borrow my laptop?"

It is his professional success, his knowledge of the "real world" applications of chemistry, that gives him the financial means to quit teaching without regrets. Because he is such a successful chemist, he has only one reason to teach- personal satisfaction. A less successful chemist might be forced to teach. Students will never drive away an instructor who feels he or she has no other means of making a living. The instructors who have the most real world experience are the easiest to lose.

The second example is from my own experience. My father, who has never taught business or finance, is a professional trader/investor. The son of a railroad worker in a tiny farming town, he worked his way through college and became a self-made man who answers to no one. He has the financial freedom to enjoy life, but then so do a lot of people. Many doctors, lawyers, and corporate execs have resources similar to or exceeding those of my father. The thing is, my dad has the time to enjoy those resources. He's my role model.

For many years, I was too afraid of taking risks to get interested in trading. My husband is pathologically conservative with money by nature, and the two of us always agreed that "someday" after we had both retired from miserable careers, I would start following in my father's footsteps. I have, of course, realized the insanity of such logic and become a trader at age 29.

It was during my misguided pre-trading period that I taught community college math courses. I did some finance examples in my classes, including computing loan payments, something most texts do not cover. The students always appreciated these examples, but I could not use them in all my classes. Students in courses like "Introductory Algebra" are not ready for logarithms. Most still struggle with basic arithmetic! When asked what practical applications there are for the course material, I could only stammer things like, "um, my dad uses algebra all the time to do his investments" or "well, you'll use the skills you learn here in

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