Slick write-up, and I especially appreciate your personal story and context to mull over. I studied Curriculum Design as my advanced degree program, have worked

Slick write-up, and I especially appreciate your personal story and context to mull over. I studied Curriculum Design as my advanced degree program, have worked 5+ retail/sales/customer service jobs, and also done formal classroom instruction. I like that distinction you put forward, because it captures what I, well, disliked about sales as a profession. I love imparting knowledge, telling stories, and holding a person's interest - that is a transaction in and of itself. It's the end goal. What I had to do in sales was get to the very end of the discussion and then "ask for the sale" which always felt like a disservice to the relationship / exchange. As in, if I did well educating somebody that they needed to buy the movie Heat to test out their audio system, I shouldn't have to say, "So, are you going to purchase this today?" because they'll have already made the decision themselves. Sales is hard like that, and I can appreciate good sales techniques in both the soft and hard approaches. ...as to your story, it really reminded me of a write-up over at the AV Club on the second installment of the Atlas Shrugged independent movies. The film beats the audience over the head with dialog that only serves to advance the philosophy (or what have you) of the story, meaning it's really preachy and not very entertaining. I think there's a difference in audience expectations depending on subject matter, e.g. it's more acceptable to learn STEM material from a heavy handed teacher, but with personal belief systems/notions, lecturing creates push-back in many cases.