I have been a professor for 25 years—most of my professional life. Even when I had full-time corporate jobs, I always took salary cuts to be able to maintain my professor role…because teaching has given me about as much joy as anything in my life. Watching students learn, improve, and gain confidence is an amazing thing! But, last spring, for the first time in three decades—since I first imagined emulating my favorite high school teachers—I realized I have no compulsion to ever be in front of a classroom ever again.
The morning after I realized the joy had gone out of my work, I saw a news article about suicides among 50-something men in the US going up by 50%. And I understood.
I now comprehend how others who have lost their passion for their jobs might lose their passion for life at the same time. If I had always defined myself and my worth by my teaching profession, the realization that teaching is no longer offering me any joy came as an awful discovery.
Fortunately, I am not on the verge of sharpening straight razors and filling bathtubs. My whole life, I’ve been a bit of a…a…and I’m going to make up a word here: a polyopus. In other words, I’ve always had multiple jobs at any given time. Though I’m giving up on teaching, I’m not giving up on life. I still love writing and advisory work—I’m sure I’ll continue those.
Still, leaving the classroom is heartbreaking; teaching has always been a big part of my life. As an adjunct, visiting, or full professor, I’ve taught in more than a dozen business schools around the world—all these job comings and goings because of one event twenty-five years ago.
So where did the joy go?
I think it went where the joy of work goes for many people of my age. It wasn’t just one thing; it was an accumulation. Perhaps the work itself—if it could be done in a vacuum—would continue to be attractive and even fun. But organizations, bosses, and coworkers impinge in ways that subtract more and more from the joyful (or good) parts until there is none left. I think there’s also less resilience toward all those interferences as I age. In the process, joy eventually became a casualty.
It’s important to note two things: 1) I am one of the lucky teachers working in higher education where I could exercise a lot of autonomy compared to teachers in primary and secondary schools; and 2) that none of the interventions in the stories above had much to do with my real job of preparing young people to be leaders of tomorrow’s organizations. But today’s organizations get in the way—impeding, what I believe is, my pretty damn hallowed calling of being a teacher. My obligation is to impart to students all the most important things that I’ve ever learned in my life—then challenge them to be better and smarter than I ever hoped to be.