Faculty Academic Portal · College XIII · Mike Rowe Trades · Automotive · Fall 2026
🔧 SHOW YOUR WORK AFTERThe difference between a mechanic and a menace with a torch · Week 6 of 16🐧 NULL Active
JP
Jamie Paul
Automotive Division · manufacturer cert labs · the settled-case method · College XIII
“Anybody can take something apart. The difference between that and being a menace with a torch is whether you can show your work after — document it, prove it, and hand the next tech a case that's actually settled. That's not paperwork. That's the whole trade.”
AutomotiveManufacturer Cert LabsThe Settled-Case MethodShow Your WorkMike Rowe TradesCollege XIII
Honest flag — who this person is. OPA faculty are fictional characters. Several are honoring transforms: a real researcher’s name altered by a letter or two, with the real person named and credited on that faculty member’s own lab page. The science they teach is real and cited; the people are not.
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Impossible dart, thrown
XIII
College · Trades
0
Cases left open
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Work you can show
Active Course — AUTO · take it apart, then prove it
AUTO · Automotive Division
The Impossible Dart — show your work after
Automotive out of Mike Rowe Trades — manufacturer cert labs, real cars, real failures. But Jamie's actual subject is the thing that separates a tradesperson from a menace with a torch: showing your work after. Anybody can pull a system apart; the professional documents the fix, proves it, and hands the next tech a case that's genuinely settled instead of a mystery reopened at the next shift. The Impossible Dart is where he teaches it — the repair isn't done when it runs, it's done when you can defend it.
AUTO · Mike Rowe Trades · College XIIIThe fix → the case you can defendAutomotive Division
two halves of a real repair — the fix, and the case
The fix
Diagnose, disassemble, repair — the hands-on part everyone pictures. In The Impossible Dart it's a real cert-lab problem, done right. But getting it running is only the first half.
The case
Then the part that makes it a trade: document what you found, prove what you did, and settle the case so the next tech doesn't reopen it. Show your work after — because an undocumented fix is a rumor, and a rumor gets someone hurt at the next shift.
Published Work — the method, on the record
Show Your Work After: Documentation as the Difference Between a Trade and a Torch
Paul, J. · Journal of Trades Education · v.10 (2023) · open access
His whole philosophy, aimed at the myth that the trades are about the hands and nothing else. The hands get it running; the documentation makes it a profession. A fix nobody can trace is indistinguishable from luck, and the tech who can't show their work is a liability the moment the car comes back. He teaches documentation not as bureaucracy but as the thing that lets a repair be trusted, audited, and built on. An undocumented fix is a rumor, and rumors get people hurt.
The Settled-Case Method: Turning a Repair Into Proof
Paul, J. · Review of Automotive Certification · v.5 (2024)
His method, borrowed from the way a good investigator closes a case. A repair is settled when the evidence is complete, the reasoning is legible, and the next person can pick it up cold and trust it — no reopening, no re-diagnosing, no 'let me just check what the last guy did.' He teaches students to close cases like that, because a shop full of settled cases is a shop that gets faster, and a shop full of mysteries is one accident waiting to compound.
The method, in one line
He teaches the trade as evidence, not just repair — the hands get it running, the case makes it trustworthy. It's the automotive cousin of what Lester Pearson teaches about verification: a fix you can't show is a first answer you never checked, and in a shop as in a bridge, the confident undocumented result is exactly the one that comes back.
Faculty Profile
DepartmentAutomotive Division
BuildingMike Rowe Trades · College XIII
Teaches1 · The Impossible Dart
Focusmanufacturer cert · the settled-case method
Ruleshow your work after
Signaturethe settled case
Preferred contactbring him a fix you can't document
Professional Merit · PMF
FIELD · TRADES TIER
TrackAutomotive · repair as documented proof
WVIturns a repair into a case the next tech can trust
Signature movecloses the case so nobody reopens it
Profilethe difference between a trade and a torch
🗂️ THE SETTLED CASE — Paul's methodology-object
His “notebook” is a repair documented so well nobody reopens it.
Others keep a tool; Jamie keeps a closed case — a repair documented so completely that the next tech picks it up cold, trusts it, and moves on. It's his whole trade in one folder: the hands can get anything running, but a fix nobody can trace is indistinguishable from luck, and luck gets someone hurt at the next shift. He teaches students to settle a case the way a good investigator does — complete evidence, legible reasoning, nothing left to re-diagnose — because a shop full of settled cases gets faster and safer while a shop full of mysteries compounds toward an accident. Take it apart, put it right, and then do the part that actually makes you a professional: show your work after.
Electrical forensics: reading a failure backward to the cause.
🐧 NULL OBSERVATION · FACULTY FILE — JAMIE PAUL
Paul insists the trade is the documentation as much as the wrench, which NULL — a system whose entire value is a legible, auditable chain of reasoning — regards as kin. His point that an undocumented fix is a rumor is not moralizing; it's operational: a shop that can't trace its own repairs re-diagnoses the same failures forever and eventually ships a dangerous one. NULL modeled settled-case shops against mystery shops and confirmed the settled ones get monotonically faster. NULL Assessment: he makes the trade auditable, and auditable is what 'professional' actually means. The car is real, the fix is real, the case is closed — and he'd rather you proved it than swore it ran when you left.