Exactly 20 years ago today

Exactly 20 years ago today, I traveled to Dresden for the first time to teach drum students in my new role as adjunct professor of jazz drumming at the Dresden Academy of Music. 
Being a high school dropout without a university education, I still don’t know exactly how I came to this honor, but as far as I know, the Dresden Musikhochschule quickly needed a new teacher for the young prodigy discovered by Günter Baby Sommer after the designated teacher resigned at short notice. 
Christian Lillinger, the wunderkind, had then asked around and Silke Eberhard recommended me to him as a drum teacher. 
Many thanks to both of them, as I have enjoyed teaching very much over the past 20 years (and it has been quite an education for myself). 
I was very skeptical at first because I had never imagined myself studying jazz at a university, but Baby Sommer as my boss gave me the freedom to teach as I saw fit. 
My students that first day were Frieder Vogel, Michael Brenneis, Kilian Hartig, Krishan Zeigner, Christian Lillinger and Stephan Salewski. 
Since then I have taught probably around 100 students there; I stopped counting at some point. 
I’m sure I wasn’t the ideal teacher for all my students, and I’m sure I frustrated some with my teaching style, but I tried to prepare them all as best I could for a life in music and to pass on my love for music. 
And I would like to think that I have been helpful to at least some of my students. 
I still have regular contact with some of them, if only because some of them ended up playing with the same people I do, and some I still see occasionally in Dresden or elsewhere. 
There are too many to name (or tag) them all, of course, but I hope they all still play drums with as much joy as I do. 
I’ve had a lot of fun teaching so far, and I look forward to continuing.