Always interesting to see things from the other side. According to a question directed at Ms. Mentor, the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s advice columnist, one anonymous tenure-track professor in their second year of teaching worries “too much while [she’s] teaching about how the class is going” and then proceeds to mope for day or two:

Question (from “Geneva”): I’m in my second year as a tenure-track assistant professor this fall, and I’m already a worn-out worrywart.

I worry too much while I’m teaching about how the class is going. And if it hasn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, I feel ill afterward. Following a day or two of undue moping, I do come up with improvements. (For problems with student participation and attention, I’m now starting group discussions.) But even as I’m trying to be positive and proactive, worrying about student reactions is seriously affecting my health and well-being.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m shy and quiet, like so many academics, and putting myself “out there” is an extra strain. I loved the summer respite this year. What can I do about this, besides junking my academic career?

Ms. Mentor’s advice? Either suck it up, or…uh…stop teaching:

Ms. Mentor, in short, urges you not to be overinvested in reaching all of your students. But if you can’t stop taking every complaint personally, and seeing every failure as yours, then teaching may not be for you. The conditions are no longer bucolic, if they ever were. Tenure-track jobs become rarer and rarer, and you may have to leave loved ones to live and work wherever someone will hire you.

Ms. Mentor suggests that you befriend, or refriend, nonacademics. Think about career alternatives for someone smart and dedicated whose thinking may be underappreciated by a callow bourgeois society.

Or you may get lucky and encounter that star pupil who’ll record your wisdom for the ages and keep your name before the public for 2,500 years. That’s a good Platonic ideal.

More: http://chronicle.com/article/I-Hate-Myself-When-Im/48904/

About Ezra Silk

I have been interested in journalism ever since I was an editor at my high school student newspaper, where I was involved in a freedom of speech controversy that was covered in the local newspaper as well as local television and radio outlets. The ACLU became involved, and the ensuing negotiations lead to a liberalization of my school's freedom of expression policy. I worked as a summer intern at the Hartford Courant after my freshman year at Wesleyan, reporting for the Avon Bureau under Bill Leukhardt and publishing over 30 stories. At the Argus I have been a news reporter, news assistant editor, news editor, features editor, editor-in-chief, executive editor, blogger, and multimedia director. I have overseen the redesign of wesleyanargus.com, founding the Blargus and initiating ArgusVideo at the beginning of my time as editor-in-chief during the spring of my junior year. During my senior year, I have co-edited the Blargus with Gianna Palmer and founded Argus News Radio, a 15-minute weekly show produced by WESU 88.1 on which I conduct a weekly segment interviewing seniors about their thesis topics. I have written over 70 stories at the Argus and continue to do reporting and blogging as much as I can.