In grade school, I used my mother’s old papers to draw floor plans. I would flip them over and fill the blank sides with rooms of all shapes and sizes, thinking about what each space could be and how they connected. I thought about where doors should go, if a hallway made sense, and whether someone could really live there. If it didn’t work, I started over. At home, I spent my free time reading or looking through architecture and home magazines. I liked the photos, but I was most interested in the layouts. They helped me imagine what daily life might look like in those spaces—where people would gather, how they’d move through the house, and where they could find a quiet corner.
I wanted to be an architect. I enjoyed the focus it took to design something useful and the idea that drawings could turn into real places for people. The summer before college, I even had the tools to make blueprints and floor plans. I did not want to be a teacher. As a naturally introverted person, I hardly considered it an option. I enjoyed studying, but I could not picture myself studying to prepare lessons and then spending the day explaining them to a room full of people. I imagined work that would allow me long stretches of quiet concentration. Teaching seemed to require an energy I was not sure I had. Philosophy was not even on my horizon. My undergraduate degree was not in education, and neither the subject nor the profession belonged to the future I had pictured.
But life appears to have its own sense of humor. These days, I spend hours reading philosophy, making outlines and conceptual maps, and considering how to explain an argument clearly. Then I walk into a classroom and teach it. I used to picture myself designing rooms, but I never expected to become so connected to the people inside them.
A room worth returning to
I am still introverted, even though some friends believe otherwise. I like quiet moments, time to think, and conversations where I can really listen rather than talk. Teaching often pulls me in many directions at once—a question here, a discussion that’s drifting, an explanation that needs to be clearer, or a student who suddenly looks confused. Even on good days, I end up tired. I usually need some quiet time afterward, but by the next morning, I look forward to returning.
The joys of teaching are often simple. Sometimes, a student has a story to finish. Or someone brings back a joke from an earlier lesson. A question we left unresolved gives us somewhere to begin. These small continuities make the classroom familiar through the people in it. Teaching philosophy has its own pleasures, too. Students ask why, offer a counterexample, or notice a consequence I passed over. An explanation that looked tidy in my notes becomes something we have to examine together. I sincerely enjoy that exchange. Sometimes their questions send me back to the reading, looking for something I had not thought to consider, and thus make my weekend an exciting quest for justifications and answers, and even more questions.
I once studied to follow my own questions. Now my students give me reasons to keep studying. There are difficulties, too. I sometimes move too quickly or mistake a nod for understanding. Students hesitate before asking for another explanation; I have to remember how much effort can be hidden behind their silence. Who has not watched a discussion move on while still trying to understand the previous point? Remembering that experience helps me look beyond whether I have finished the lesson to whether anyone has assimilated what was just said.
When the care comes back
When I began in academia, I didn’t doubt that teaching would demand my attention. I didn’t expect, however, how often students and mentees would offer theirs in return. They remember me on special occasions or when I have deadlines to meet. They send greetings on Teacher’s Day or my birthday, ask how I am doing, or check in without needing help, simply to see how I am going with my deadlines. Sometimes the conversation begins with their concern for me. I appreciate those gestures because they are freely given. Someone with a full life of their own has paused to remember you. Now don’t tell me that isn’t wonderful.
A greeting cannot tell me everything about the teacher I have been. But it lets me know that something of our time together has remained. I especially enjoy hearing from students after our daily classroom encounters have ended. I learn what they are doing, which plans have changed, and what questions have followed them into another stage of life. Their attention makes me want to give more of mine. I find myself spending longer over feedback, reconsidering an explanation that did not work, or making time for a conversation because I know what it means to be taken seriously. The desire grows quietly. Someone trusts me with a concern or returns to tell me what happened next, and the work becomes more personal. I am preparing for people whose lives I have begun to know.
When someone opens their world
Sometimes, students and mentees share more than just their schoolwork with me. A talk that starts about an assignment can turn into a conversation about a tough decision, a dream, or what comes next. They might feel pulled toward something but aren’t sure if they can go after it. Or they might be trying to meet someone else’s expectations without knowing if it’s right for them. When they open up like this, I picture an unfinished blueprint on a table. Some parts are clear; others have been erased and redrawn. Their own hopes mix with what others want for them, and they’re still figuring out which is which.
It takes trust to let someone see your unfinished plans. But being trusted with those plans doesn’t mean it’s my job to finish them. The person in front of me is growing and changing, and she might discover something new that neither of us expected. Her situation can change, her interests can grow, and something she sets aside today might be worth trying again later. I need to listen and understand before I suggest what to do next.
Sometimes I can share information that helps someone make an informed choice. At other times, I can gently point out an assumption they may want to examine more closely. Often, simply listening gives students or mentees the space to hear their own thoughts, recognize what matters to them, and decide what they want to do next. Taking someone’s dream seriously means more than expressing enthusiasm; it also means talking candidly about the steps, resources, and effort it may take to reach it. Encouragement is most helpful when it is honest about the challenges, limitations, and responsibilities involved, while still respecting the person’s ability to choose their own path.
What we are made for
Teaching has strengthened a belief I want to share with my students: we are made for truth. I see this in the questions they ask about why something works, in their frustration when things don’t add up, and in the satisfaction they feel when they find a solid explanation. Students can tell the difference between something that just sounds convincing and something backed by real reasons, especially when they have time to think it through. Dante gives the human desire to know a memorable expression:
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza.1
I translate it to: “You were not made to live as beasts, but to pursue virtue and knowledge.”
These words are spoken by Ulysses in Inferno, whose powerful speech leads his friends into a disastrous journey. In context, they are more challenging than just a celebration of ambition. Wanting to know more takes good judgment, and even a strong invitation can lead people the wrong way. That’s important in teaching. I have to be careful with how my explanations, advice, or encouragement influence others. Just being confident doesn’t make my guidance right.
Architecture gives us a good example. An architectural drawing must answer to dimensions, materials, weight, and use. In teaching, an explanation must answer to evidence, and guidance must answer to the circumstances of the person receiving it. If I want students to care about truth, I must welcome questions that complicate my account and acknowledge when I need to reconsider. The search becomes personal as well. What can they do well? What do they need to learn? Which commitments are genuinely theirs? What is worth pursuing, and what will it ask of them?
Discovering what they are made for may begin with learning to ask those questions honestly.
Walking alongside my mentees
My own changed plans make me sympathetic to uncertainty. I once had a fairly definite picture of my future, and my life took a different turn. That experience cannot tell a mentee which direction to take, but it reminds me to leave room for possibilities I have not understood. A student may be good at something without wanting to build a career around it. Another may be drawn toward work they do not yet do well. What appears sensible from my position may look different from theirs. Have I understood their reasons, or have I already begun comparing their plans with the future I would choose?
Sometimes, we move forward by just looking at the next steps—a skill to practice, a class to try, or a conversation to have. These small steps help someone make decisions without having to figure out their whole future at once. And it is always a joy when mentees come back and can explain a choice in their own words. They might still have doubts, but they’re starting to tell the difference between what they know, what they fear, and what they still need to learn.
Near the end of Purgatorio, Virgil tells Dante:
Non aspettar mio dir più né mio cenno; libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio.2
Or “Do not wait any longer for my words or signals; your will is free, upright, and sound.” The poem describes a spiritual journey far beyond anything I could claim for teaching. Still, the scene offers an image of guidance I find worth considering: a guide recognizes that the person he has accompanied no longer needs to wait for every instruction. One can only hope that our work as teachers helps students and mentees develop something of that independence. Their growing ability to judge, make sense of life, and find meaning in it is part of what makes the time together worthwhile.
When former students check in, I am glad to hear from them. When they tell me what they have decided without asking for my approval, I am glad of that, too.
A vocation in daily practice
On Teachers’ Day, people often talk about educators in grand terms, but the work itself can feel much more ordinary. Teaching is mostly about preparing, grading, meeting deadlines, repeating explanations, meeting with students, and making decisions when you’re tired. Still, the calling shows up in these everyday tasks. Feedback helps students know what to work on. A thoughtful answer can make it easier for someone to ask a tough question. Clear and consistent expectations help students understand what’s needed. This is how I see teachers helping to shape people’s character. We help develop attention, judgment, conscience, and imagination through what we teach and how we live.
Of course, our role is just one part of the picture. Students are shaped by their families, friends, backgrounds, and beliefs. Their growth belongs to them, and we’re fortunate to be trusted with a part of their education. That trust calls for care and brings genuine joy. My students and mentees ask thoughtful questions, share ideas worth hearing, and make plans that deserve our attention. They remind me that teaching means seeing each person as a whole, with their own relationships, hopes, responsibilities, and choices. Sometimes, I get to witness something click—a challenging idea, a decision, or a new possibility someone feels ready to explore. Those moments bring a special kind of excitement I never expected from this job.
What remains of the architect
I still love architecture. I still see the child in myself who studied floor plans and wanted to create something useful for others. Teaching has become another way to do that. I plan carefully, figure out what’s needed, and change what doesn’t help. The real reward comes when someone can use what we’ve worked on together. Both architecture and teaching are ways to serve others by paying attention to the people they’re meant for. In the classroom, those people are right in front of me. They have their own voices, dreams, doubts, and the freedom to question what I suggest.
My students and mentees open their worlds to me, sometimes cautiously, sometimes with an enthusiasm that makes me reconsider my own limits. Their trust makes me want to prepare better, listen longer, and give more of myself. Their care reminds me that this relationship has helped shape my life as well. As a child, I imagined standing inside a building that had begun with my drawings. Now I find satisfaction when someone takes what we have worked on together and uses it to make a choice I could never have made for them.
I once wanted to draw places where people could live. Teaching brought me alongside people as they discovered how they want to live—and helped me discover how I want to live my own life.
A small tribute, with gratitude, to my students and mentees, whose company makes even the demanding days feel like days well spent.
Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto XXVI, lines 119–120. Ulysses speaks these lines while urging his companions toward the voyage that ends in their deaths; they should not be treated as an uncomplicated endorsement of limitless inquiry.
Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, Canto XXVII, lines 139-140, from Virgil’s final address to Dante. The application to mentoring is an analogy, rather than an equivalence with the poem’s spiritual journey.
