Back to School 2025

Academia

My social media feeds are full of academic colleagues posting about their first day of the Fall Semester 2025. I see you!

Joy! Some are jubilant.

Fear. Some are unsure of the future of their jobs or institutions

Welcome! Some are in new highly coveted positions.

Congratulations! Some have recently earned tenure.

Bravo! Some stalwarts are in their second, third, or fourth decade of teaching. Most are somewhere in the middle.

Farewell! Some long time academics are beginning their final year or entering their first year outside of an academic career.

What I have learned from my decade in higher education, and especially from my 17 years post-academia is…

1. As a music teacher, you can make a difference in higher education, a community music school, K-12 public or private education. or as an independent studio owner.

2. Change is good. Choose your path.

3. Know yourself. (Or find yourself.)

4. Don’t take anything personally. Other’s choices and actions are not about you. Not really.

5. If you leave academia (for retirement, requirement, or choice), you won’t remember the faculty meetings, committees, service, paperwork, digital paperwork, or the web-based management and grading portals that change every year.

6. You will remember the colleagues who befriended and mentored you and kept in touch, whether with an ongoing friendship or an occasional email or private message or text.

7. You will remember the students who were an important part of your life for a season. Those students who will have long since graduated and completed advanced degrees or changed careers.

Many are teachers and professors now, navigating the post-pandemic world of education and higher education. Yes, it’s a different world.

Those students are now adults with lives, marriages, divorces, families, and pets that you know by name from Instagram.

Some may even reach out to you with kind words years later. You will remember them all—some more than others. Yes, we all have favorites.

8. The very best part of your academic teaching career is the part that receives the least formal recognition, but is the most important part—effective, informed, compassionate, and caring TEACHING.

If you are in academia, the students are the reason you are there. It’s easy to forget that sometimes with the pressures and demands of the job. Additionally, each student who walks into your studio or classroom brings their own energy, pressures and demands.

You have an opportunity to see each student as an individual with unique talents and quirks; to guide each student and also to learn from them.

That is the gift of teaching. 💜

Cynthia Vaughn, August 19, 2025 (Updated)