On Balancing Teaching and Writing
I’ve been teaching in some capacity for the last eight years. My first time teaching was as part of my MFA program at Florida Atlantic University. I was technically a graduate student instructor, responsible for a two/two course load of English Composition. All the instructors got a textbook filled with essays meant to inspire argumentative writing. Freshman had to take the class, so the rosters were always full and we got a teaching stipend–it was a win-win situation.
I never thought I’d be a teacher in the long run. I majored in English in college (with a minor in Latin lol), but as each year came to a close, I was no closer to deciding on a career path. I knew I wanted to write, to read, to be a person of the arts. But the teaching life, much like the writing life, chose me.
The summer after grad school, I worked retail. I’d worked in malls on and off my teen years, but at twenty-six, I couldn’t take it. Being on my feet for eight hour shifts, the loud music and difficult customers, working nights and weekends–not for me. One night, I had dinner with a post-grad friend who had just scored a job at a local High School. She gave me the principal’s email and told me to reach out, that they were still hiring for fall and I might be able to swing a spot. I got an interview and was offered the job on the same day.
I was assigned to teach AP Language and Composition at a High School. I only lasted six months before quitting mid-year and signing on to teach at a performing arts school for about a tenth of the pay, no benefits, and a lot of instability. At the High School, I couldn’t handle the schedule; five days a week of waking up at six in the morning and not driving off campus until five or six at night. I wasn’t allowed to be creative at all. I actually got in trouble if I veered from the course materials that were given to me in a big binder during orientation. The principal visited my class often to check-in. He would pull me outside the room and ask me, essentially, what the hell I was doing. I was trying to teach the kids how to write and how to be passionate about writing. He didn’t like that I played music while the kids wrote, or that I showed music videos and asked the kids to formulate arguments about symbolism, theme, message. I was supposed to be preparing them for an exam that I myself had never taken. I was preparing them to be writers, not test-takers, and I knew that someone else could do this job better than me.
The performing arts gig was more enjoyable, but it wasn’t worth it for me to stay on longer than one semester. I never thought that I’d be living at home in my late twenties, but as a writer (as well as a person that deals with mental and behavioral issues), it was very hard for me to find my path. In many ways, it still is, and I’ve been lucky to find a purpose that I continue to aim toward in my everyday life. But I felt embarrassed to be so lost and meandering at the time. I wanted stability, but I also wanted to be excited about the work I was doing. I eventually packed up and moved to Los Angeles and applied to other performing art schools, schools that could offer something more substantial. I waitressed in the interim and wrote at Starbucks in the meantime, and after one summer in LA I lucked out finding a school in Hollywood that hired me to teach Archetypal Psychology. To be honest, I had no idea what that entailed, but after reading the textbook, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, and realizing I would be talking about storytelling, Carl Jung, and movies, I was in.
I’d been with that same school for the last six years until moving to Nashville, where I happily accepted a job at Vanderbilt teaching writing. When I knew we were moving, I applied to a bunch of schools in the area, but Vandy was obviously my top choice. With a small, but elite, creative writing program, I knew leading an MFA workshop would likely be out of my reach, but a spot in the English Department was available to teach writing. It felt like a step in the right direction, the next move in what has been a series of moves to get me where I am today.
This has all been a long and winding tale to make the simple point that teaching has been an ideal career for me, as it allows me the space and flexibility to write, to teach in other avenues simultaneously, and to have a lot of freedom when it comes to my schedule.
Teaching at the college level, be it an art school or a more traditional university, you’re not there 24/7. You’re not even there five days a week. Usually you get a MWF or T/R schedule of a few courses per semester. Classes can be fifty minutes or an hour twenty, sometimes more if it’s a specific lecture course, and you can typically choose what time of day you’d prefer to teach. Sometimes you get what you get and you don’t get upset, but I’ve been fortunate because I actually prefer the morning classes so I can have my afternoons and nights free. And classes never start before 8:00AM, so if you’re a psychotic early bird like me, you can even get some work done before the day really begins.
Teaching exercises different muscles than writing. For one, teaching is social, be it online or in-person–you are talking to real people. You have to be on, which can be challenging if you’re having a shitty day or if and when personal trials and tribulations occur. But this can also be a good distraction from the inevitabilities of life. Teaching helps me take the focus off myself, and as a bonus, I truly learn from my students too. Writing is a solitary act, something that sparks in your head and happens at a desk. It is a lonely fight. The balance that teaching and writing gives me is that it makes the loneliness more bearable; it gives it meaning.
In a 2020 Interview “Validation Is for Parking Tickets,” Deborah Treisman speaks with writer Lorrie Moore about her experience teaching through the years. When asked about how teaching influences her work, Moore responds: “It both buys me time and devours it. So I don’t know. It sounds coldhearted to say that it pays the bills (although a true writer must say that), because teaching is supposed to be a passion and a calling. But if one is teaching in the arts, one is an artist first—and is hired to be an artist first and set that example, even in the classroom. Teaching was never the goal for me, but it strangely became my life in a lovely and satisfying and accidental but necessary way. I have felt very lucky to have brilliant and engaging students and to have a job.”
Now, I’m no Lorrie Moore by any means, but I admire her and her work ethic (as well as every single thing she’s ever written). I admire that she works for a living, that she is honest about her path. I find this deeply encouraging. You hear all the time,“Those who can’t do, teach,” but I think that maybe those who can do should teach. Some of my absolute favorite people in this life have been my teachers and mentors. I don’t know where I’d be without them. It’s also rewarding to be on the other side of the coin–to be someone’s teacher and or mentor. I cherish the rapport I have with students both past and current, and I’m happy to help guide them when they need advice and support.
Teaching allows me to have a life, too. I’m married, I travel, I love to cook, I like to be in nature, I see friends, I can go to a coffee shop on a Tuesday afternoon if I damn well please. Yes, I take home grading and yes, I respond to student emails, but I don’t have a boss that tells me I’m part of a “team,” nor to pretend that I’m part of a “work family.” I get to design my courses, choose my materials, adjust as I see fit along the way. I’m always learning and growing and adapting. There are challenges that I need to overcome, just as in my writing life there are obstacles I face on the page and have to triumph over. I consider both teaching and writing to be my work; I just get paid a lil more for the teaching part (as of now). Teaching also gives me health insurance, so that’s pretty clutch.
The goal has always been to make writing the career, but for most of us that’s unrealistic. Look at Lorrie Moore– she’s an icon in the literary world (she works at Vanderbilt btw and I am starstruck every time I see her in department meetings and at events), and even she teaches, has for decades, and she finds joy in it–purpose.
I know that if I really did have all the time in the world to sit and write, I probably wouldn’t. There’s something about the schedule, the ability to plug writing into that and make it part of my routine that feels more doable. I recognize this may not be the case for everyone, but for me, the teaching feels like a worthy cause and the writing feels like a gift. Sometimes it’s the other way around, but together they go hand in hand.
Just last week, one of my students stuck around after class and asked if I had any reading recommendations. She told me that she wanted to get back into reading and was looking for a memoir, something that involved art and a strong female voice. In my Foundations of Nonfiction workshop, we’re reading from Larissa Pham’s Pop Song next week, so it was fresh in my head and sounded like it might perfectly fit the bill. She typed into her phone and announced, “found it!” before heading out the door. It felt nice to be asked, to be trusted.
Did I mention that we get weekends, holidays, and summers off?
About Brittany Ackerman
Brittany Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida Atlantic University. She has led workshops for UCLA’s Extension program, Catapult, HerStry, Write or Die Tribe, and forthcoming for Lighthouse Writers. She currently teaches writing at Vanderbilt University in the English Department. She is a 2x Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Hobart, and more. Her first collection of essays entitled The Perpetual Motion Machine was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel The Brittanys is out now with Vintage. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
