Tightrope Walker

Some colleagues found him a tad frivolous While others thought him over-fastidious The Dean advised him to start off assiduous Though I.T. pooh-poohed it all as ridiculous... So the new instructor shifted and twisted himself into the oddest-looking pretzel-like pedagogical configurations, hoping to please everyone but -- you guessed it -- he pleased no one, OF COURSE! not his colleagues, not the Dean, not I. T. … Yet his students found him competent, considerate, kind and they certainly didn't seem at all to mind that an 'ideal combination of qualities' he never did seem to quite find --- the rarest of balancing acts, about which certain colleagues, the Dean, and I.T. will forever whine