Out of the Ivory Tower

If you’d asked me in my first six weeks of teaching high school if I had made a mistake leaving college teaching and the Ivory Tower, I would have screamed, “yes.”

I can explain my initial shock in the first few days it in one word: duty. I’d never had to “monitor” students’ behavior, and suddenly, I had “break” duty, which meant I had to stand in a designated spot like some ancient guardian statute protecting a sacred passageway from incursion. I also had “lunch” duty, where I watched a pack of middle school students whose actions often caused me to think to myself “what the heck are you thinking?” (both them and me). I had “traffic” duty in which I yelled at parents who tried to cut off each other to be the first to get in line to pick up their children who stood fighting on the sidewalk with their siblings about who got the front seat.

And then, I had another form of “duty”—classroom management. Never in my 10 years of college teaching had I experienced students talking while the professor was talking. If I had a few unruly freshmen who hadn’t yet learned the rules, I reprimanded them, and that was it. Not these students. Talking. Talking. Talking. Oh, my goodness, talking. I thought I had gone to hell.

In addition, I could never figure out where I needed to be quick enough for the insistent ringing of the bells. Did I have duty? Do I go to lunch? And when was that meeting? And even once I knew where I needed to go, I had trouble gathering my materials and getting there in the short amount of time between the “change class” bell and the “late” bell. I was accustomed to moving to new classrooms—no one stays in the same classroom at the college level--but I wasn’t accustomed to having to do it so fast.

I also found having no office to go to when my shared classroom was in use disconcerting. I didn’t know where to go, and once I found an empty table in the teacher’s lounge, I couldn’t get much work done without a computer, my files, and my books. And sitting the lounge wasn’t conductive to work anyway. Someone came in every few minutes to check her or her mail or warm something up in the microwave. I ended up talking more than I’ve ever talked during a workday.

At the end of the first week, I lost my voice. Completely. I had never been “on” so long. A college professor isn’t required to be on campus all day—much of the work is of the mind, and like a surgeon or a lawyer, the real work they do is not done in an office. As a college professor, I would teach, then retreat to my office. I would meet with students, and then I would shut my door. I would lead a committee meeting, and then go home to do the rest of my work at my home office. I graded papers in coffee shops. I spent hours in the library doing research. I had work to do, but where I got that work done was up to me. I was in control of my own time and my own space, and trusted to get my work done—where ever it got done. Therefore, being a college professor means spending a lot of time alone.

I love being around people, but I like having some control over my social interaction. Most people think I am an extrovert, but really, I am not. This new job brought my secret out into the open where I had to confront it. I was a closet introvert facing the challenge of never really being alone during a workday for the first time in my career. I couldn’t shut my office door and have privacy. I couldn’t go finish my work in my home office. I had to BE THERE and be ON--constantly. I tried to make private space and alone time for myself by eating my lunch sitting on a bench outside, way away from where I thought anyone would be at that time of day, but then the PE students trotted by. I felt I couldn’t get away. I would go home at night and fall asleep with my daughter at 8 pm, exhausted from so much contact with people.

I get e-mails from professor moms who wonder about what has happened to me since I left the Ivory Tower and ended the column. The underlying question for each of them is: could I do it to, too? The answer is "yes--but make sure your personality can take it." I was, for a professor, quite social. I knew many who were not, and those folks I would worry about if they tried to do what I have done. I can say that now--because I have made my way through the worst of it, and can look back to see my path.

After those first six weeks, I started adjusting.

Like so many other caretakers of the sandwich generation, I felt guilty when I wasn’t caring for one generation or another. Add to this the pressures of a new job. Doing something totally, completely, and only for me was not common. If I wasn’t carrying for my mother, I felt I should be playing with my daughter, and if I wasn’t with my daughter, I thought I needed to be cheering up my mother. And besides this, I had a job to do. I became lost between the different claims made on me.

A few weeks into my new job, I knew I had to change that. As I found my work life more full of people, leaving smaller gaps for me to be alone and peaceful, I had to work to bring those moments into my home life. Yoga, listening to music, sitting on my porch after everyone else was asleep, writing—all these helped.

But that made the difference was a change in the way I experienced “peace.” Until then, I needed exterior peace to feel it inside. Quiet, solitude, beauty, calmed me. But with less time for these moments, I had to change the way I arrived at that peaceful feeling. Moving through my new environment, I started to work on carrying that feeling with me, regardless of where I was, who was with me, and what I was doing.

I imagined myself in mountain pose—grounded and strong--and the wind blowing around me, creating swirls of dust and debris. The mountain cannot bow to the wind, but remains itself in the middle of the chaos of otherness. I tried to be a mountain amid the multiple demands pulling on me.

Some days I was more successful than others. But overall, now I can say that I am now feeling more like a mountain than a valley.

Now, well into my second semester, I love my new job. The students, more than anything else, have won me over. (more later)