of his senior year at Wright State University, Pollard married Kim Dowler, a home-town girl he had been dating for seven years. Dowler did not go to college herself, but started working right out of high school. After Pollard's college graduation, Dowler supported him for a little while, but he then got a job as a school teacher. It was a job with a lot of vacation time and this meant Pollard was able to pursue his music. But the job rubbed off on him, and Pollard has stated that his years as a teacher inspired songs such as "Gold Star For Robot Boy", "Teenage FBI" and "Non-Absorbing". Pollard has worked at all levels of primary school, from elementary school to middle school to high school. He found the most difficult assignment to be teaching physical science to junior high schoolers. Eventually he settled on teaching fourth graders. He said of his teaching years: "I never went to the teachers' lounge. But the teachers liked me. In elementary school, there aren't a lot of male teachers, so they liked the fact I was around. They'd say, 'Why don't you come down and hang out with us in the teachers' lounge?' But I would go off and take a nap to try to get rid of my hangover. I had 14 years of that." Career Beginnings Pollard started playing music in local cover bands in Dayton, and got involved in a songwriters' guild, but he longed to be the leader of a band. In 1981, he began playing original songs with fellow Northridge High School alums Kevin Fennell and Mitch Mitchell. For two years they recorded in the basement of Pollard's house, and played out under a variety of names (including Instant Lovelies, Acid Ranch and Coyote Call). Then in 1983 Pollard eventually dubbed the project "Guided by Voices". At the time he was working part-time as an elementary school teacher. In total, Guided by Voices released 16 full-length original albums between 1987 and 2004, as well as a large number of EPs and compilations. Although known as a lo-fi band that relied on home recordings, in later years the group relied more on professional recording studios and worked with producers such as Ric Ocasek. Initially, Guided by Voices was a band in name only, its members being a revolving cast of musicians, most of whom Pollard kicked out of the