(HJ:  Harold Jansen, Interviewer)

MT:  Yes, it strikes me as the, as a foundational experience and like a foundational place.  So, I feel as though as a person I have evolved considerably, or grown I should say, grown considerably from the person that I was here, when ... the person that I was when I was here.  But I couldn’t have done that without the foundation that I had from here.  So, it strikes me as the place that enabled me to launch.  And I was given skills.  I was given experiences.  I was allowed to grow and I took advantages of these things certainly and then I parlayed that into a number of different things that enabled me to put myself on the trajectory or to be on the trajectory that I ended up on.  So I’m very fond of the place because it's ... yes.  I think if I had a different experience like, you know, your intro class to political science would have been 400 students in a room, I remember like even the bigger classes like the 'Intro to Psych' or the 'Intro to Geography' or whatever.  I didn’t react well to those particular environments.  So, this was the environment that I needed to be in to kind of to set myself up to do well with where I wanted to go in the future, in any particular direction that I would have had.  So, in that sense it’s crucial.  I don’t think, I certainly didn’t realize it at the time.  I really didn’t realize it at the time, but I draw on so many of the experiences and the things that I learned from here still, routinely, which is great.  Yes.

HJ:  Is there anything else that you want to add that we haven’t covered about you, or about ...

MT:  I never thought I was going to be coming back closely because I got the University motto tattooed on my arm.

HJ:  Wow.

MT:  I know and I was just kind of like the ... I came back.  I remembered Chris Kukucha, he saw it after I got it done and he laughed and laughed.  He’s like, ‘You lame, lame person.’  And then I realized it’s the same motto as all of the UC system in California and I was like, ‘I should have thought of that before I got it done.  Nobody wants to be that prof. with the motto tattooed on them.’  But yes, it’s the sort of thing where I love the sentiment.  It’s like ‘Let Light Be Made' is I think the way that they ...

HJ:  Or, ‘Let There Be Light.’

MT:  Yeah, it’s seen as ‘Let There Be Light’ but the other alternative is ‘Let Light Be Made’ and it’s the kind of thing where it’s just like you go, you make light, you be a good influence in the world, onwards.  And so, it’s a very cheesy way of thinking about the University of Lethbridge but that’s where ... I like that sentiment and I try to carry that forward.