In my memory, the room is small and wider than it is deep. There are only three rows of desks and a large chalkboard on the wall. The test that day would match my interests with my strengths and, at just barely seventeen years old, I would have my career mapped out for me. All I needed to do was follow course.
In all honestly, I can’t remember the results. Probably because I already knew what I was going to do.
When I was four years old, I said I would be a pastor. Not any pastor but the first female Lutheran pastor. By age five, another woman beat me to this. Unfazed, I declared I would become the first Lutheran nun. My mother explained this was called a Deacon and did not require wearing a habit. But that wasn’t what I had in mind. So, for the next eight years, any idea of what I would do with my life was a mystery.
Until I woke one day as a freshman in high school and knew I would be a nurse. I wasn’t doing well in my biology class and I didn’t know anyone who was a nurse but… I felt certain this was my path.
That is, until one morning in my senior year when I woke to discover I would not be a nurse. As quickly as my conviction had come, it had left, and I was beside myself. My parents, teachers, and advisors all told me not to worry. Just go to college, they said. You can figure it out later.
For as long as I could remember, teachers, parishioners, and extended family had repeatedly asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Contemplating my future had begun in preschool. By age eighteen, there was supposed to be no doubt. And now I was told I should just go to school? I didn’t need to worry?
In disbelief, I chose not to attend the universities where I was accepted. Instead, I moved across the country, got a full-time job, refused financial support from my parents, and took my first class at San Francisco Community College. The textbook for Humanities 41B was The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, Volume 2, and the semester’s lesson plan followed the hero’s journey. To say I was blown away would not be hyperbole. The entire paradigm in which I had been operating was shattered. My parents had raised me on literature and poetry, classical music, fine art, and Christianity. Discovering how religion fit into Joseph Campbell’s monomyth AND that everything which was valued in my family fit into one discipline called Humanities… well, I was gobsmacked. Now there were possibilities! It didn’t clarify what I would do for a living, but my worldview had been altered ineffably.
Within a few years, I was questioning the purpose of college. Not education—that I believed in—but earning a baccalaureate. Wouldn’t my degree only mean that an elite group of white men had declared me knowledgeable in what they deemed tectonic?[1] So when my father’s illness progressed, I left school to be with him. Even he welcomed this, providing of course that I would return to school later.
It was twenty years before I returned. Twenty years of a successful career in nonprofits and my own therapy practice. Twenty years before I found myself in a position to return: single without children, unemployed, owning a home, and equipped with great credit. In other words, I had no other obligations to distract me.
In my last year at The Nature Conservancy, we played a game for our staff retreat where others had to guess your dream job. Two of my colleagues wanted to be the manager of an NFL team and two others desired to be captain of a ship. One wanted to be Ernest Hemingway and another Georgia O’Keefe. My dream? To be a professor of Humanities.
I come from a long line of teachers. My mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all taught elementary school. My father’s real dream was not to be a pastor, but to teach religion. Except that when he graduated from college, Lutheran schools only hired religion teachers who were ordained. By the time he finished seminary and served a congregation for two years, the rules had changed, so he remained in a parish. He died before I started teaching at the Wellness and Massage Training Institute, but my mother could not have been more proud. Finally, I was the fourth generation of teachers.
When I decided to return to college at age 44, it wasn’t to finish my degree. I had done fine without a degree. Instead, I returned to teach Humanities. I wanted to be a college professor.
It's worth noting that everything I had done up to that point had not been planned. I applied for positions, yes, but I never said, “I want to be” a support services coordinator at an AIDS nonprofit or a director of philanthropy. As for nursing, I knew nothing about nursing – nothing. The decision felt ordained, out of my control, until one day it wasn’t. I didn’t even want to be a massage therapist. I went to school for my own healing after years of working in HIV. By the time I had my national certification, however, I also had a solid practice. All I had ever done was follow the next logical step, walking through the doors that opened. Fortunately, I enjoyed most of it. Some jobs have felt like a calling, others like sheer luck and a lot of fun. I had no reason to believe teaching would be any different.
So when my college advisor told me I would need a PhD to teach Humanities, I got a PhD. Seven continuous years of schooling, all with the goal of teaching.
My big break came after my Master’s degree. I was living in a county with only 21,000 people, which had a very small extension campus of a community college seventy miles away. A friend of sorts, with a PhD in English, recommended me to the English Department Chair and, with minimal effort on my part, I was hired as an adjunct. Later, I networked and eventually landed another adjunct position at a different community college two and a half hours away. Meanwhile, I also scored a class teaching Humanities from the 1600s to the present. I was allowed to craft the class from scratch, following the pattern of the hero’s journey as my course outline and content, obviously inspired by my own college experience. I was over the moon.
Anyone who teaches knows teaching is a lot of hard work. Lesson planning, grading assignments, and office hours always take longer than expected, especially as a novice. Still, I loved it. The conversations I had with students when they were engaged and a lightbulb switched on were priceless. Except priceless doesn’t pay school loans. Adjunct teaching, even with a full load, only brought me $9,000 a semester.
Still, I loved teaching and I believe I was a good teacher. I pushed students and held them accountable. I leaned in, engaged them, and encouraged them. My lectures were discussions, exploring their answers, questioning their responses, and leading them to new possibilities. Students who bristled in the beginning would later call me their favorite. Some even stayed in touch.
But I needed a full-time position. I was willing to take a 50-60% pay cut from my previous occupation for the privilege of being an assistant professor. Even a lecturer, if that’s where I needed to start. Only, positions in my expertise are few and far between. I expanded my possibilities into other areas and scoured job listings across the country. I revamped my CV monthly and crafted my teaching statement, seeking input from those with positions I dreamed of having. I networked like crazy. Still, it was hard to land interviews.
Let’s be clear: applications to teach are extensive endeavors. Each one requires two or three letters of recommendation; letters that have to be edited for each institution and each position. This makes the process very different from any other job search as you must rely on the time and goodwill of overworked academics. How many letters can you ask someone to write effusing your praise? 10? 15? 20?
I sold my home and most of my belongings for the agility to move anywhere. When a university in Kentucky turned me down after a second interview but suggested I might be good for another position later at their Honors College, I traveled there on my own dime expecting to relocate and wait for my shot. Then I fell in love with Berea, the town as much as the college, and thought surely this is where I would fit.
Instead, I moved to Oklahoma to help financially restore a small private college. I didn’t want to return to fundraising but on the other hand, at least I would be at a college. That, I hoped, was a step in the right direction. It wasn’t. Then I worked for a museum that was managed by a university, again hoping to get my foot in the door. Quite definitively, all doors were locked.
After a few years, I stopped applying. It was suggested that being over 50 was a bit old for a new career in teaching. Having taught and created curriculum for a vocational college two decades prior didn’t seem to count. Ditto for the volunteer training I created that was adopted by a consortium of nonprofits in the 1990s. Even my two and a half years teaching at community colleges couldn’t land me a position at another outside of Idaho. My five-year window for post-docs closed. At a certain point, I couldn’t keep peeking through the panes. I needed to grieve my loss and move on.
Now I work for the Census Bureau. And I write. When I’m lucky, I get paid to present. This wasn’t what I had in mind for myself. Did I give up on my dream too easily? I think of my father who never got a chance to teach as he wished. But truth be told, he was always teaching: as a preacher, a wine merchant, a believer, a father, a sage, and a friend. Will I ever be a professor? Probably not, but who knows? Maybe. Until that day comes, and regardless of whether it does, what I’m doing will have to do.
Postnote: To be honest, while I still miss the energy of being on campus and in a classroom, I am incredibly happy with my life. When I get wistful, I remind myself of how much stress comes with teaching and that is stress I’m grateful not to have. So my story is not really a tragedy or a comedy. My life is poetry with an unexpected ending (and it’s not over yet).
What about you? Have you ever really wanted to be something and it didn’t pan out? At what point did you give up? And how do you feel about that now?
[1] Genevieve Carlton, PhD wrote a very good “History of Women in Higher Education” that is worth reading. Updated March 20, 2023.
Wow, that was an inspiring read. I had never connected your PhD journey to teaching as being connected to a larger and generational narrative. My two best friends in high school were both laser focused on reading glasses and big horn sheep. Um, bighorn sheep? She got a PhD in bighorn sheep, the other an optometrist. Me? No clue. But I have another friend in her fifties who spent her whole career in international corporate finance who wanted to teach the next generation of accountants and was rejected completely. It was going to be her dream retirement job. I think it’s really weird we don’t let qualified people teach.
What a long strange trip it's been.
So much to unpack from your amazing life story, but I'll start here:
I was so blessed some fifty+ years ago to fall into a summer job that became a lifelong career.
It turned out I would be particularly well-suited for all aspects of the work itself, and it involved much interaction with people.
Love it all and plan to keep at it til I can't.