Back to School
There is a sacred list of names, deep in the musty desk-drawer of my heart, of those teachers who changed my life. Some did so by pulling back a veil. Others, by helping me course-correct by just a degree or two ... and thus changing the direction of my journey as a student, a writer, a thinker, and a person, in the process. As I return to teaching this fall, for the first time in a long while, I'm prompted to pause and think on what it means, and has meant, for my life. I'm in a professional transition stage right now, and I don't imagine that I'll be teaching for very long, but I do feel extraordinarily grateful and excited to be back in the college classroom right now, at this moment in my life and in history. Teaching is such challenging, energizing, and always evolving work, and it has made me better at pretty much everything else I do. Teaching is leading, and it is also following. Teaching is listening. And it is also clarifying and articulating. It is designin