Ryan Howard
When it comes to volunteers that need to be personally and hugely appreciated, many faces come to mind here at 826. One of the most prominent, though, is that of Ryan Howard. A member of the volunteer class of Fall ‘05, Ryan came to us in September as one of our best and most reliable tutors. His smiling face and ability to make even the most reluctant students want to sit down and write won us over immediately. Last semester, he was promoted to intern, where he: fixed our computer lab, taught one of the best workshops we’ve ever had, set up a file sharing system, wrote highly entertaining blogs, entertained us with his sweet dance moves, raised the bar on how well tutoring could be run, was indispensable in the production of both of our student publications, created awe inspiring flyers, and any number of other things that we should mention, but, well, this is getting kind of long, and there’s a lot more we want to go over. Currently, we like to call him our Volunteer Coordinator.
Ryan enjoys a lot of things, which we will enumerate herein, much to his certain dismay and embarrassment (his deep-seated and occasionally fleeting humility is another reason we love him so). He likes to sail, look at the stars, listen to music, and eat Reubens and hamburgers. He plays drums in the local band Canada, and sometimes for Saturday Looks Good to Me. He works at Shaman Drum Bookstore. He just graduated from the RC at U of M with a degree in Philosophy and Creative Writing, which means, of course, that, while totally unmarketable, he is able to think and express his ideas better than most people. He has many plans for the future, but we’ll let them stay secret for now.