“Excuse me if I wax philosophical,” remarks Professor Moya Arthur as she sits in her office one afternoon. “After all, I am a professional.”

Arthur is a professional in her field, no argument there. Even though she’s obviously faux-boastful, Arthur remains modest about her knowledge and dedication to the field she has taught here at Bakersfield College going on 20 years.

Philosophy for her is “a school of thought and a method of examining the world around you. It’s beyond a job and a paycheck; it’s a way of life.”

As Arthur puts it, “You get into philosophy not because it’s a job, not for the money, but because it’s something you love to do. Nobody goes into it for the money. I’m lucky enough today to get paid to do something I love.”Arthur was a third-year biology student at UC Davis when she says someone essentially forced her to take a general education class in philosophy.

Arthur enrolled in the class, and her initial opinion was that it was “a complete waste of time.”

“I basically hated and detested this class,” Arthur said. “I was used to taking fairly tough science classes, and my first philosophy exam kicked my butt. I was like, ‘whoa, I’m supposed to be smart,’ what happened?”

Arthur at first disliked the subject, but the difficulty she experienced inspired and challenged her until the initial distaste turned into a fascination and eventually a lifelong love with the subject. Soon though, you might say, life took a few turns to give her things to philosophize upon.

Arthur summarizes in a few words an incident that would transform her life forever. “My husband and I were in Santa Barbara, and we were having a perfectly lovely day. At night we went to sleep, and the next morning when I woke up . I couldn’t hear. It was terrifying.”

Arthur spent almost a year with the world around her muted to utter silence, a devastating circumstance for an individual who comes from a musical background and is a musician herself.

Countless doctors had no explanation for the phenomena, even though there were plenty of theories; genetic predispositions to various disorders with side effects causing deafness being the main culprits.

Arthur went on to explain that inside the cochlea there are areas that respond to sound frequencies and interpret these frequencies as electrical impulses for your brain to read and translate into voice, a musical note, or the sound of a car horn.

These areas exist inside fluid-filled chambers of the cochlea and are like tiny microscopic hairs vibrating in response to the waves of sound.

Arthur compared her hearing to that of a person with normal hearing by saying that if someone with normal hearing had a thousand little “hairs,” she herself only had twenty to work with. This prevented her from hearing at certain frequencies, especially those that were of a lower register, say maybe a note from a bass guitar, or a deep male voice.

“I took a yearlong sabbatical where I didn’t teach at all. That’s when most of my hearing was completely gone,” Arthur said. “My husband and I went to specialist after specialist and every one of them thought I could have some sort of horrible disease that might have caused it.”

To this day, Arthur isn’t absolutely sure what caused the loss of her hearing. Several different possibilities include the side effects of various disorders such as scarlet fever, or hay fever.

She theorizes her immune system may have become overloaded fighting one of these diseases.

“But eventually I was sent to UCLA where I underwent a procedure to insert an cochlear implant into my head to help restore some of my hearing,” Arthur said.To this day, Arthur utilizes a combination of her ears, lip-reading, and her mind to experience the world around her and what people say.

“I’m considered a master lip-reader. It’s very tough,” she said. “Say I were to say two different phrases to you; ‘island view’, and ‘I love you.’

You have to learn to interpret these two phrases differently since they appear the same on the lips. You have to decide which the person is saying on a contextual basis.”

Arthur sums it all up like the philosophy teacher she is. “I’ve learned a lot more than I’ve lost. But that’s life. You’re always learning.”