WHY I STOPPED TEACHING

I Couldn't "Phone It In."

There is something different about this Labor Day weekend for me. Since 2013, when I was 63, I have been teaching one or two classes every semester at St. John's University in Queens, NY. They have been in both the Journalism and English departments. I cherished those classes, and I liked my students so much that somewhere in the middle years I had an existential crisis: I told one of my colleagues I just didn't love my students that semester. I figured if I didn't love my students, there was something wrong with me.

It was wonderful to develop a new skill, or art, or career, at that age: I found a calling for which I was unaccountably well suited. St. John's let me be myself, execute the curricula as I saw fit, encouraged my "performance art" method of teaching and talking and digressing. I didn't like the expensive textbook racket, so I taught, at first, from my writing career and life experiences, even as it sometimes took students a little time to figure out who Professor Robins wa…