User:Zeng8r

A bit about myself and my wiki-philosophy:

I'm an educator, author, and amateur historian living in Tampa, Florida. While out of the classroom on family leave during the 2007-08 school year, I stumbled across Wikipedia and quickly discovered that many articles about subjects that I know well were in dire need of assistance. Since I wasn't teaching in the classroom that year, I spent way too much time sorta-teaching on the internet by creating, expanding, and improving articles about history, my hometown, Florida Gators sports, and a plethora of other random topics that have caught my attention over the years.

While I started out as an eager and prolific contributor, wikilawyering and wiki-politicking took some of the fun out of this project over time. However, as a teacher, I know that Wikipedia has become perhaps the most important research site on the internet. So even though I'm usually pretty busy IRL, I still hang around here to incrementally expand coverage of topics that I know well and to fix vandalism on articles that I've edited in the past.

This user is one of a handful of actual natives of the state of Florida. This user has deep roots in Tampa and is a student of its history. This user is of Spanish and Italian ancestory.

This user is interested in the U.S. State of Florida. This user is a member of WikiProject Tampa Bay. UF This editor is a member of Wikiproject University of Florida.

As a teacher of history, this user is aware that our clocks are ticking. As an English teacher, this user reads Wikipedia with a red pen in hand. This user believes the world would be a better place if everyone had access to a quality, free education.

This user is a participant in WikiProject History. TB This user is a fan of the Tampa Bay Rays This user is a Gator.

This user believes that one should never stop feeding one's brain. This user makes music. This user is the proud parent of 2 children.

All this user is saying is give peace a chance. NEWS This user has access to Newspapers.com through The Wikipedia Library. This user has been on Wikipedia for 17 years, 3 months and 24 days. The Original Barnstar Zen, your knowledge of the history of our metro area is impressive. Nice articles! Blaze33541 (talk) 05:25, 24 November 2007 (UTC) The University of Florida Barnstar For good and thorough work pertaining to articles about the University of Florida. The Barnstar of Diligence To you Warrington (talk) 12:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC) The Teamwork Barnstar for such hard work and making the Tampa Bay Area more visible and talked about on Wikipedia. Moreau36 (talk) 17:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC) The Barnstar of Diplomacy Thanks for watching out for the evil and for the bad doing their work in the dark... Hafspajen (talk) 21:30, 13 December 2013 (UTC) The Real Life Faithful Barnstar The Real Life Barnstar is awarded to editors who make contributions both online and offline, by organizing wiki-related real-life events. What I want to say, if you still watching my page, why don't you jump in leaving some messages sometime and conversating a bit - time to time? Don't be shy! You are very much invited. Hafspajen (talk) 15:56, 15 June 2014 (UTC) This is a Wikipedia user page. If you find this page on a site other than Wikipedia you are viewing a mirror site. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:zeng8r.