Okay, you said you might respond.
@beenherebeforeagain
My initial questions:
I thought you once stated you were a teacher or a professor. What was life like as a teacher or professor?
What do you enjoy about your home state?
1) My third major profession in my life was as a university lecturer. I'm disabled/retired now. The distinction between lecturer and professor has to do with production of academic peer-reviewed research (at least in my field). I really enjoyed it; it allowed me a great deal of freedom to pursue new ways to transmit important information about my field to my students.
My university was lots of non-traditional students and first-in-family/first generation in higher education. And although I love theory, I found it much more important to attend to practical applications of the field...teaching students how to understand and use the theories of the field, rather than just memorizing hundreds of facts...
2) Illinois is mostly flat; that's both good and bad. I live in the central part, and corn and soybean farming dominates the countryside. The large city I live near is famous as the home of Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln tourism is one of the foundations of the local economy.
As the state capital, it sucks tax dollars out of the rest of the state, and it's also home or regional HQ for several insurance companies...which also sucks dollars out of the rest of the state. Healthcare, retail and dining rounds out the economy.
I'd actually like to live somewhere else, but so far my wife and I are unwilling to leave family to move far away.
