composition

Yesterday, I did something I never thought I would do. I formally gave up my teaching position. This Fall, no one will call me Professor Papaioannou. I won't get to enjoy the shocked looks when someone asks me what I do for a living, and I tell them I teach at a university. I won't meet a new classroom full of new students who rely on me for guidance and support. I won't get to have the wonderful exchanges with colleagues during meetings and project building sessions. It's really a very bittersweet moment for me. I love teaching. I do. I love students and collaboration and leadership and everything that comes with it-- except the system of adjuncting itself, which leaves you in a constant survival loop all for the chance of finding a job someday maybe. Leaving teaching behind really had to do with stability. I became anxious all the time, wondering how I would pay my bills or how I would find time to squeeze in writing my dissertation (which is costing me over $1300 a s...

"Think of the solution, not the problem." That is a line from one of my favorite books, The Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. The book is mostly about Richard Cypher, a woodsman who faces enormous tragedy and learns that he is a wizard--- I think of the Sword of Truth Series as an adult version of the Harry Potter series (and highly recommend it to everyone!). In this moment, as Richard agonizes over all the way things could go wrong while trying to pretty much save the world, Zedd (Richard's mentor) tells Richard  he must "think of the solution, not the problem." This line stuck with me from the first time I read it nearly ten years ago. This year, I've really tried to make this my mantra, and I thought that, in the midst of the chaos of the end of the semester/academic year, it was worth sharing with all of my educator and student friends out there. In many ways, this mantra stands against a lot of what I've learned as a graduate student, whe...