Not without being fake. People can change over time, but the core "being" of a person – what they're really like – tends to stay static. Here's a specific exam

Not without being fake. People can change over time, but the core "being" of a person – what they're really like – tends to stay static. Here's a specific example. You can be taught to overcome a fear of getting up onstage. You can't be taught to love and relish when you find just the right metaphor to convey an idea to a class. The latter gives you a dopamine hit, or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, then you have an uphill battle. From Mathematical Writing, on Donald Knuth: > Don’s secret delight, he confessed today, is to “play a library as if it were a musical instrument.” Using the resources of a great library to solve a specific problem—now that, to him, is real living. One of his favourite ways to spend an afternoon is amongst the labyrinthine archives, pursuing obscure cross-references, tracking down ancient and neglected volumes, all in the hope of finding the perfect quotation with which to open or conclude a chapter. Don takes great pleasure in finding a really good aphorism with which to preface a piece of writing. So many people have written so many neat things down the ages, he said, that it behooves us to take every opportunity to pass them on. Don has been known to take such a liking to a phrase that he has written an article to publish along with it. > So how are we to find that wonderfully apposite quotation with which to preface our term paper? Serendipity, said Don. Live a full and varied life, read widely, keep your eyes and ears open, live long and prosper. You will stumble across great quotations. For example, Webster defines ‘bit’ as “a boring tool”—Don was able to use this when introducing a computer science talk. Of course, this isn't necessarily applicable to high school teaching, which is more about legally-mandated babysitting than about teaching. But the core question is an intriguing one.