reading Tim Gunn's story
I have not ever been a conventional academic. Oddly, this popular book came to me from a highly academic friend whose research into Oscar Wilde's life has dovetailed with an interest in Tim Gunn. So I read Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work by the man himself. Gunn has taught at Parsons, and while many of his anecdotes are about Project Runway, his role on that show is as a kind of teacher. So this book is really a long story about living as a teacher. It was heartening to me to see that even Tim Gunn must occasionally deal with the scorn of students. Quote, heavily excerpted: "Two of the best designers... seemed to have disdain for me. It was a lot of scorn to soak up. I said to one of them: 'I feel an obligation to each of you, and an aspct of that is to give you equal time in the workroom. But if you don't want it, we can talk to the producers.' But they kept having me there, and it began to hurt." (p. 22)