From fighting cases to grading physics labs, teacher Beau Wells has drastically changed careers. He left his law practice and became a Pre-AP/IB Physics and AP Physics C teacher.

“When I first started teaching, part of what drove me was the fact that I’m extremely interested in the material,” Wells said. “l really love physics and I really like to teach other people what I find interesting.”

Wells says his love of physics comes from his love of math. Physics being the written language of mathematics and the study of everything, wells says why physics is a key fundamental of learning today.

“If you really want to understand why we are here, how we got here, and why things are the way they are, then physics is the route to answering most of those questions,” Wells said.

Obviously, teaching was not his first career path. Wells graduated from Cornell University where he got his bachelors in physics and later went to the University of Michigan School of Law where he obtained a law degree. Working as a commercial litigation attorney, Wells defended large corporations involved in lawsuits with other large companies.

“When I started working in the practice of law, there were times I would be excited, and there would be times where I would be working on a case, there would be very interesting esoteric questioning I would have to analyze and I would find that interesting,” Wells said.

Enjoying his years at law school, Wells says he and many lawyers tended to have a lot of downtime on their hands after a case is closed leaving them left with nothing to do, till the next problem walks through that door. Surprisingly, Wells said he would bring his physics textbook to his office and practice his math skills as a hobby.

“I would say, hey I haven’t studied quantum mechanics for a while. Let me break out my textbook and see if I can remember how this works,” Wells said. “This is what I would do to occupy my free time, I just really loved physics.”

Wells said his happiness depended on making the right decisions when it came to his career. He said half of the time spent, as a lawyer was primarily paperwork, which really wasn’t appealing to him anymore.

“In the end I had to decide, do I want to spend half of my waking hours doing something that isn’t something I really enjoy doing solely based on it benefits, and the answer for that was no,” Wells said.

He says teaching has played a key role in his life, even though law school was the best three years of his life, he still loves his current job as being a teacher.

“The fact that I get to share the material and topic with other people is gratifying, but it’s also great to build those relationships with the students,” Wells said. “It played a big role in part of my happiness as a part of being a teacher.”

Many times Wells has experience students coming and attending his physics club, which is held on Fridays. Through word of mouth, students from other classes who are interested to go more into depth of the subject and participate in understanding more advanced concepts of physics.

“Its great to see students come in, who i frankly don’t even know sometimes and question me about a theory and its also very humbling to see how excited the students get,” Wells said. “Not to mention the increasing amount of kids who come every week. it’s just great.”

He encourages positive attitude and focuses on why something happens versus just giving his students a formula and explaining how to solve it.

“I’m a firm believer in not just learning the process,” Wells said. “I think if you try to learn something by learning a process, you haven’t learned anything at all. Like really what is the point? If you cant see where the connections come from then you really don’t understand it. So what if a period for a pendulum can be calculated with a given formula, why is that the formula? To me that’s the bigger question, why is that the formula for the pendulum and If I can’t answer that question then that means I don’t understand anything.”

Focusing on creating an exciting environment for his students Wells says he is grateful to be teaching his students a subject he is passionate about and is happy he made this choice of become a teacher.

“Words cannot describe the immense gratitude I have for teaching and my wonderful students,” Wells said. “I plan to teach for as long as I can and honestly you can say it[changing careers]  was the best decision I’ve ever made in terms of my happiness.. it’s honestly a great feeling, and I love it.”