To work on VM internals — especially high-performance VMs — one needs to have a wide variety of skills and knowledge up and down the system stack, at timescales from nanoseconds to minutes, from short instruction sequences to millions of LOC, and of techniques as diverse as compiler optimization and garbage collection, all the while remaining cognizant of the tradeoffs involved. How does one obtain this knowledge? Typically, the practitioner absorbs information from the research literature, and by reading and modifying code of existing systems, either while being mentored as a grad student or new recruit, or perhaps as a program of self-improvement. Rarely do VMs get taught in school. Recently, I had an opportunity to create and deliver a full, semester-length course on VMs. It was a golden opportunity to distill the entire field into a 15-week course and try it out on a class, and in this talk I will report on the experience.