Writing about what I won’t miss about being a professor helped confirm my feeling that I’d made the right decision.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot that I’ll miss.

What I’ll Miss about Teaching

Course planning was one of my favorite aspects of the job. 
I loved thinking hard about the main ideas, perspectives, and skills I wanted students to take away from the course. I liked searching for high-quality readings that would be interesting and thought-provoking, designing projects that would help students be engaged in history, pondering how to set students up for success, and imagining the arc of the semester. It was like putting together a big puzzle.

I liked planning individual class meetings, too. 
I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of finding activities to achieve the day’s goals, figuring out how to ensure students used or built upon the information they’d read outside of class while also presenting new information. I liked imagining how I might keep students engaged through regularly changing up what was going on – whether that be discussions, analysis of texts or images, synthesis activities, lecture or clips from documentaries, thinking and writing, with competition or more playful activities – and having some tasks done individually, in small groups, and in the large group. 

Planning for teaching used my expertise, stretched me, and was creative work. Big fun. 

Implementing the plan was scarier, and class meetings didn’t always work out the way I’d hoped. However, there were times when students got exactly what I wanted from the readings, asked smart questions, happily engaged with one another in small groups, and smiled at something I hoped would be amusing. (It’s embarrassing how gratified I was by that.) Sometimes an individual student would hang around after class to talk more about the topic. Sometimes there was a really good vibe in the classroom.

Often I was teaching first-year students who had no intention of majoring in history. Many of them hated history in high school. I liked the challenge of making the past more interesting and relevant. I liked watching them discover that history is not just a bunch of names and dates to be memorized but periods where people like them grappled with decisions like when a nation (or individual) should go to war and whether to protest perceived injustices. 

I’ll miss teaching African American history – both to white students and students of color (for somewhat different reasons). They often found the unfamiliar history eye-opening and were shocked by the extent of the oppression experienced, time and time again, by African Americans. I liked asking students to consider the history of African American agency, community, resilience, and resistance as well. Later in my career I was better at facilitating ways individual students might think about their own racial identities and experiences. I like to think that students were empowered by focusing on the methods people used to achieve social change.  

I’ll miss teaching students about social history – the sorts of topics that were never mentioned in high school classes but are the stuff of everyday life that matter a great deal to people: love, sexuality, courtship, families, work, leisure, health, disabilities, gender.  

I liked trying to build nonthreatening spaces where students could listen to various perspectives – from historical actors and other students – and try out ideas.

I will miss those magical semesters when a group of students comes together as a community that supports one another in learning. This often occurred in senior research seminars where advanced history majors loved history, had thought about issues like dealing with the biases in sources and in themselves, had a sense of what “good history” is and earnestly strove to achieve it in their own projects. It’s gratifying to work with students who strive to improve and accept feedback.

When it worked the way I tried to facilitate, the students would come to know and accept one another’s unique personalities – geeky, anal, shy, funny, laidback, eccentric, perceptive – and their different interests and topics. It was especially satisfying to watch them show one another how to find an abstract for an article in a database or make Word do hanging indents, give suggestions on a better thesis statement, provide positive reinforcement on great ideas or evidence, and ask one another truly curious questions. 

I liked occasionally blowing students’ minds with a concept like race or gender being socially constructed.

What I’ll Miss Besides Teaching

I know I was very fortunate to be working at Elon University, an institution aligned with my values. At Elon University, student learning and growth are the top priority and faculty, staff, and administrators all pull in that direction. Great teaching was valued and rewarded, and engaged learning, inclusion, and innovation were seen as important aspects of teaching. SOTL is considered important. There’s an ethos of service.

Although occasionally people may disagree about what constitutes fairness, those who work there care about the well-being of others and about justice. Diversity was a goal and efforts consistently made (if imperfectly, as everywhere) to improve respect for and inclusion of various types of communities. Although it could be exhausting, to be at a place that was always striving for improvement was also energizing and something to be proud of.    

I had a great deal of freedom to choose what courses I would teach.

I had the freedom to do whatever scholarship I liked. Guess I still do – but I don’t have access to annual travel support and the occasional funding for a sabbatical or research expenses. That was such a privilege to have.

There were always opportunities for growth and development supplied by CATL, CEL, the Center for Writing Excellence, and the library.

And to be very practical, I’ll miss being supplied with a laptop and with a patient, knowledgeable, and responsive tech staff who made it possible for me to do my work. When there was a problem with a data projector or a clogged toilet, they were fixed fast. Those benefits shouldn’t be taken for granted.

I’ll miss the people I worked with – enormously. The faculty and staff I knew are smart experts in their fields, talented at their jobs, dedicated. They work very hard. They are concerned about students – not just as learners, but as people. They are kind to one another – and were kind to me! They listen and support one another – and did so for me! They collaborate. They envision better things. Some of them have a great sense of humor, which brightened my days.

I never wanted to be someone whose friends were mainly from work; I guess I worried that when I retired, I would lose them – because we won’t run into one another so much, and I know well how busy they are. So yes, I am worried about that. Fortunately some of them are now retired, too.

I’ll miss that feeling of waking up knowing what I’ll be up to during the day. The very first thing, I’d think, “What are today’s topics?” The answer might be the nadir in African American history, Babe Didrikson’s joys and travails, World War II, the disability rights movement, 19th century friendships, what really happened at Stonewall, or what’s an effective public history exhibit.  

Last and certainly not least, I’ll miss the feeling that I’m doing valuable work. 

What’s next to replace those things? I’m not sure yet.