What's In A Name?

I never wanted to be a teacher.

While my childhood career interests were many and varied (including, but not limited to, cartographer and street sweeper driver) I don't ever recall teaching being on the list. I don't even remember playing "teacher"or "school" with any great enthusiasm. And while it seemed to be a phase that most of my friends went through in jr. high and high school, teaching as a profession never once crossed my mind.

I applied to teach with The Princeton Review on a whim, over a year ago; I was underemployed, frustrated, bored, and desperate for anything new. I found the advertisement on Craigslist of all places, filled out the required forms, and wailed when they started asking me supplementary questions.

"Describe your teaching philosophy."

"Describe your previous teaching experience. Include any diverse student populations you have worked with."

At that time, my teaching experience was limited to one semester as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate anatomy lab. It was a simple position that mostly consisted of drilling students on the branches of the facial nerve, finding the common interosseous artery for the millionth time, and reciting raunchy mnemonics (cranial nerves, anybody?)During my first month I was absolutely terrified. Most of my "teaching" consisted of watching my classmates give a lecture on the brachial plexus, and nodding sagaciously. I eventually warmed up to the position, and enjoyed watching my students master difficult concepts and succeed. Still, that was all the teaching I ever wanted, and when May rolled around I was a little more than relieved.

So here I was, driving to Boulder to give a five minute audition lesson for a position I'd never trained for, or prepared for, or even wanted. That is a long drive and a lot of time to argue with oneself.


"I can't do this. I'm not a teacher. I don't want to teach."


"Yeah, but you don't have a choice. It's decent money. And you know this material forwards and backwards."


"I don't want to teach. I can't stand in front of a classroom for two and a half hours and talk. Introverts don't teach."


"Well, what other ideas do you have?"


"..."


"That's what I thought."

It went like that for 60 miles.

My audition lesson was on the difference between hawks and falcons. I was terrified. The interviewers said I did a great job channeling my nerves to put energy into my presentation. I had no idea. I went to Qdoba afterwards, got a celebratory burrito, and alternated between people watching and trying to figure out why these poor, deluded, fools thought I would make a good instructor. I wondered that all through my training. I wondered it during my first class, in between nervously dropping markers and notes.

Her name was Andy, and for the rest of my life, I'll never forget her. She came up to me with tears in her eyes after the first class, stammering about how she'd never had good biology professors and didn't know a thing about this subject.

"This is not my place. Someone else would know what to tell her. Someone else would show her how to learn. Someone else would know how to make this work. Someone else, someone else..."

But there was only me, so it had to be my place, and it had to work. And it did. I watched all 10 of my terrified undergrads transform into confident students who answered my questions with questions of their own. Somehow I came to own this thing that was never supposed to be mine in the first place. Each lecture brought me closer to a potential I had never imagined, and slowly, reluctantly, I came to realize that I might actually be good at this kind of thing. I might even like it.

I never wanted to be a teacher, but teaching, it turned out, wanted me. And right now, I couldn't think of anything better.