One More Year of Teaching

This last semester has been a slog.  Interesting topic, interesting, engaged students - and a ton of work.  Work that at no point did I ever feel all that much enthusiasm for. 

So I've decided that I will cast a critical eye on my teaching next fall (I am already slated for a class then) and spring (if the class I proposed is accepted).  If things don't improve, I will declare myself officially Done With Teaching.

I have long suspected that I was burning out on teaching, back when my dream of full-time academic employment was still alive, but it really came to a head this term.  Some days I literally had cramps in my gut during the drive to campus, cramps that somehow never manifested on non-teaching days.  About the only part of it that I liked was talking with my students outside of class, or reading the books I'd assigned.  The rest, though, ranged from painful to boring. 

These are not good attitudes for a teacher to have.

So next year is a test.  Either this spring was a fluke, and it was just a bad combination of things, or it wasn't, and I am in fact no longer interested in teaching. 

I will not be surprised if the latter is the case; it feels lately like I'm groping my way back to the person I was before grad school, rediscovering the things that excited me and brought me pleasure.  Teaching was never something to which I aspired; indeed, part of the reason I went for the doctorate was to ensure that I'd never have to teach high-schoolers, figuring that college students were at least there voluntarily.  (Shows how much I knew!)

Research, writing, reading - and photography, art, the outdoors, and tinkering with things - those are (and have long been) the sources of my lasting satisfaction.  They are wells that never run dry.

This is a useful thing to realize now, in my sixth year of blogging, a process that started when I fell out of the academic tree onto my head.  The forest is large, and I know how to climb more than one kind of tree.

Comments

[Amanda]

I had a lot of the same feelings about teaching by the time I changed careers. I wasn't a horribly bad teacher, but I never felt like I was a really good one either, and it made me so anxious and miserable that I had worry dreams about it all the time. Ironically enough, I don't think I found my inner teacher until I started working at a reference desk, at which point I realized that I'm much better at one-on-one instruction than at standing in front of a classroom (and grading papers).

Sometimes there are flukey bad semesters. But I'd say getting back to the things you love to do is always a good idea.

[John]

I tried college teaching but did not feel it suited me for much the same reasons. As much as I liked interacting with students after class or helping them outside the classroom, I never really took to presenting material and discussing it in class. I still haven't found a good replacement, unfortunately.