Assistant Professor of English David Schmid began his teaching career at UB, when in 1994, both he and his wife obtained positions in the English department.
Described as "congenial and kind" by colleagues like Patricia Darstein, a receptionist in the main English office, Schmid said the students are what he loves most about UB. What he likes least is a "dead heat" between the parking situation on campus and the fact that there is not a coffee shop in Clemens Hall.
Schmid was born in Exeter, a small, rural area in Southwest England.
"People from the more industrialized areas of England would make fun of us," he said. "We'd be called hicks, basically. That would be the comparison."
Life was easy growing up, he said.
"My parents had worked very hard to move from the working to the middle class and my brother and I enjoyed the fruits of their labor."
Schmid attended the Exeter School, a day school for children ages seven to 18 from 1975 to 1982. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Pembroke College, a school within Oxford University and his Master's degree from the University of Sussex, where he met his future wife.
After college in England, Schmid spent the first six months of 1989 teaching English in Northern Spain, " . and I sort of moved from there to California," he said. "I moved to California to do my Ph.D."
In the latter half of 1989, both Schmid and his wife entered the Modern Thought and Literature Program at Stanford University. Schmid received his doctorate in 1994.
"I really didn't have a plan. I went to graduate school because there was nothing else I wanted to do," he said. "To say I was lucky to stumble into something I enjoy doing would be a huge understatement. (My wife) had much more of a definite sense about what she wanted to do, while I was just kind of drifting."
Schmid described this "drifting" as a hardship; having had no ambition or sense of direction, he attributes his success to his wife and is particularly proud of his doctorate, because it was the first thing in life he had to work for.
"Before (earning my doctorate), I was really just coasting," he said. "Most of my teachers in high school said I'd never amount to anything. I'll leave it to you to judge how right they were."
He said that his biggest accomplishments in life are his doctorate, his teaching and his family.
"I am incredibly proud of the teaching I do. But I probably regard my family as my greatest accomplishment because next to my daughter, everything I do professionally seems totally irrelevant," said Schmid.
"I have one supremely intelligent, beautiful and generally awe-inspiring daughter named Lucia who will be 2 years old in November," he said.
Some of Schmid's family still resides in England, where he grew up with his parents and brother.
Schmid's mother occasionally worked outside the house as a nurse's assistant and at a grocery store, but most of the time she stayed home to take care of the children.
"My dad came from a family of eight kids, and they were abandoned by his father in the '30's," said Schmid. "He had six brothers and one sister, and my grandmother could only afford to look after one of the kids. So the sister stayed with her, and all the brothers had to go into homes."
Schmid's father eventually established his own business selling and repairing car tires.
"He has a very strong streak of anti-authoritarianism in him so one of the reasons he wanted his own business was so that he didn't have to take orders from anyone else," said Schmid.
Schmid's brother, who still resides in Exeter, was diagnosed with dyslexia "too late to do very much about it" and has gone into the same field of work as his father.
"Later on he took some other exams to get to where he is now (in the company)," said Schmid. "I have a great respect for him because by now he had two kids and would have to study in the kitchen with the laundry hanging into his face on the kitchen table until very late at night."
