Letters from the Homestead

Letters from the Homestead

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Letters from the Homestead
Letters from the Homestead
I said I was done with college teaching.

I said I was done with college teaching.

... and now I'm going back (for one class)

Courtney Bailey's avatar
Courtney Bailey
Jun 22, 2025
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Letters from the Homestead
Letters from the Homestead
I said I was done with college teaching.
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Welcome to Secret Letters, a paid subscriber perk of Letters from the Homestead. These monthly letters are exactly what you think: secret dispatches that feel a little too vulnerable to put in a free newsletter.
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I burnt myself out.

Richard Redgrave’s The Governess (1844). She looks burnt out, too.

I remember being a junior in college and setting the goal of becoming a college English professor. I’m not sure where this surge of clarity came from, but it put me on a path to spend the next several years on the academic pipeline, stressing about GRE scores, stressing about getting into programs, and then hyperventilating about coursework, comprehensive exams, my dissertation, and then the job market.

I sometimes look back on all those years as one never-ending heart palpitation.

When I resigned from my university position in spring of 2020 (over Zoom, of course), I was sure I was done with college teaching. As a professor, I’d found academia very myopic and self-important. I distrusted its systems of governance, most of which I found inefficient and cruel. More personally, I struggled with how the work of teaching well seemed to drain all my creative resources. I had nothing left for myself. I longed to be selfish, to write what I wanted to write.

It felt very good to quit something big. I’d just quit a marriage about eight months earlier. Why not quit a career, too?

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