Today when I opened up my laptop, I began working on the final two in-class presentations I will offer as a lecturer at the University of Helsinki. For sixteen years, I have been a University Lecturer. In January 2025, I will start a new job as Associate Professor of English at the University of Jyväskylä. I will still teach, but teaching will no longer be the defining task of my position.
My career as a lecturer started when I was a graduate assistant at Indiana University in 1998. I taught Introduction to Linguistics and an experimental course called The Ebonics Controversy. It was clear from the start that teaching was something deeply personal for me. Relating to the students seemed to satisfy some previously undiagnosed hole in my persona. The act of teaching might be something akin to performing artists who work onstage: it’s terrifying, but when it goes well, it feeds the soul in a way that little else comes close to.
Working as a teacher has suited me very well. I leave this part of my career with gratitude and more than a little nostalgia. Before I go, I need to get a few things off my mind, a confessional, so that I can begin the next phase with a clean slate (to use a very appropriate, teaching-based expression).
Here, in no particular order, are a few things I need to admit.
Confession 1
I have only taken one official pedagogy course, ever. I am not officially trained to teach. To be a University Lecturer in this day and age at a Finnish university, I should have a minimum of 20 credits of pedagogical training. I have 5 credits. I reluctantly took one pedagogy course a few years ago because, well, I kind of had to. I hated it. (I am sorry to admit this, but I am being honest here, remember?) During the pedagogy course, some university peers from other fields had the task of giving me feedback on my sample lecture. “Don’t worry,” one of them wrote on the feedback form, “you will be a great teacher someday.”
Someday. This was after about 16 years of teaching.
I suppose an irony is that, as a requirement of my new position, I have to take a pedagogy course at the University of Jyväskylä. After all these years of teaching university students, and now that I am changing careers from mostly teaching to mostly research, it’s finally time to get “qualified.” Never mind. I am sure it will be a great pedagogy class, and I am (kind of) looking forward to it.
Confession 2
Covid was hard for a lot of reasons. We all know that. But as a teacher, it nearly derailed me. I came this close to quitting my job during the pandemic. Teaching online and being away from students in the physical classroom was something I couldn't cope with. It took several pep talks from my colleagues and supervisor at the time (thanks, Maria) to get me back on track. I am glad I didn’t quit.
Confession 3
I have tried, and failed, three different times to get into the Teachers Academy at the University of Helsinki. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the pedagogy credits (see Confession 1). Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to write the application right. Or maybe it’s simply because from a strictly pedagogical perspective, I am not qualified enough, and the competition is too high. Luckily, several of my immediate colleagues have been admitted into the Teachers Academy, and we teachers in my program have all benefited from their status. We even took a couple of trips to the Scotland and England thanks to their funding, some of my best memories from my job at the University of Helsinki.
Confession 4
No Teachers Academy, but the students themselves seem to appreciate my teaching. Tonight I will join the program’s current English students at their annual holiday party to collect my fourth award as “staff member of the year.” Last week, when a student stayed after class to tell me the news, I was stunned but grateful. We chatted for a few moments, and then I said to him, “My colleagues must be happy I am leaving, so someone else will get this award for a change.” I was being ironic, of course, but who knows, maybe there is some truth to it. So here is my confession to my colleagues: I am sorry about this. Blame the students, not me. Maybe this is their way of saying goodbye, and I appreciate it.
Confession 5
The students can’t possibly know what their appreciation means to me. I care a lot, maybe too much, about my job and about them. Even though I have done this for more than 25 years, I still get slightly nervous before walking into a classroom. Sweaty palms. Heightened heart rate. And I am usually flushed and exhausted by the end of the lecture. If a lecture doesn’t go as well as I hoped, I feel deflated afterwards. Exhausted. On the other hand, when the students are engaged, active, responsive and actually seem to enjoy the learning, there is no other feeling like it. It’s a high. I know that not all of my colleagues are affected in this way, and, frankly, it’s probably more mentally healthy for them.
Confession 6
The job shouldn’t be personal, but it is. Opening myself up to students leaves me feeling exposed, but it also invites in some of the most profound and touching moments of my career and even my life. Ask me about the stash of personal notes I have saved over the years. Ask me about the time I was visibly upset in class on November 9, 2016, and the students offered up so much empathy and understanding that I can never forget or repay. Ask me about the students who have left their studies long ago but remain friends, because they were willing and able to connect with me as a person, not just as a teacher.
Confession 7
Especially in the early days of my career, I was perpetually running to catch up. There was so much work to do, all at once, which meant there were many times when I was only one chapter (at best) in front of the students. “Why haven’t you posted our study guide yet?” “Why didn’t you post the slides before class?” And so on. Well, it’s because, despite the illusion I attempted to create, I was frantically trying to stay ahead. The number of times when I finished up my PowerPoint slides two minutes before class started, running breathless into the classroom and praying that for once there would not be technical difficulties with the projector or other equipment? Yeah, too many times to count.
Confession 8
Related to confession 7: throughout my adult life, I have had one major re-occurring nightmare. It takes various shapes and forms, but the gist of it is this: I am supposed to teach a class, but I am running late. It is the horror film version of confession 7. In my dreams I am trying to finish up Power Point slides that won’t save to the computer, or open a memory stick that won’t function, or my hands stop working, or I can’t speak, or I try to find a classroom that doesn’t exist, or I face a sea of students who get bored and start booing and march out of the room. None of these things have ever happened in real life (well, okay, the memory stick thing has happened), but it’s interesting that the fear of exactly this is what haunts me.
Confession 9
The grumpy looking student who sits at the back of the room and looks bored during class? The one who talks to her friend and rolls her eyes when I say weird stuff during class? The one who checks her phone continuously, and then leaves halfway through class? I see you. Oh boy, do I see you. In fact, I am kind of pathetically obsessed with you. Why are you so bored? Why don’t you care about what you are learning? An entire classroom of eager, nodding students is not enough to compensate for that one disengaged and uninterested student. (And the same goes, sadly, for teaching evaluations.) My logical brain knows that it is not likely to be about me, but rather something that the student is going through, but nonetheless I find my brain spiraling, trying to find a way to reach them and pull them in.
Confession 10
Grading is by far the worst part of the job. I want the students to do well, and when they don’t, I always wonder what I could have done better, or why they were not inspired to do better themselves. It is a shame that evaluation has to be part of teaching, but there is no good way around it.
Thanks. I feel better now. I am looking forward to these last few classes as a lecturer. Thank goodness there will still be some teaching in my new post. We draw so much inspiration from the students and from teaching. I can’t imagine doing a university career without them.
Comments