This Is Me

You may think it odd that a teacher, someone who's around dozens of people all day, could be an introvert, but I absolutely am.  This author is describing me:

The most powerful self-revelation of my adult life occurred while I was eating a Cubano sandwich in a Florida strip mall. I was running some teaching workshops at a university in Fort Lauderdale and had an open slot for dinner. On the recommendation of my host, I walked from my hotel to a small Cuban restaurant nestled amid a random assortment of storefronts. As I usually do when I dine alone on the road, I brought a book.

Having ordered my sandwich, I opened up Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and began reading. On page after page, I recognized myself with astonishment. For the first time in my life, I realized that personality traits about which I had always felt some degree of shame were shared by a significant minority of the human species.

I learned, for example, that people like me need solitary time to recharge our batteries — even if we enjoy socializing with others. I realized that I could stop feeling guilty for making quick escapes from parties or campus social events — even when I loved everyone in the room and was enjoying the conversations. I discovered that plenty of people find prolonged eye contact a little uncomfortable. I finally understood why I hate small talk and don’t relish meeting new people whom I am unlikely to ever see again...

Geeky Pedagogy raises the very good question of why introverts would decide to pursue a profession like teaching, since the highly social nature of the classroom would pose obvious challenges. Yet introverts chose to teach anyway, and we continue to make that choice every semester. We do that, Neuhaus argues, because we love our subject matter so much that our enthusiasm spills beyond our individual selves. We are led into the classroom by a desire to share our intellectual passion and inspire others to see in our subject the same wonders and mysteries as we do...

Most introverts aren’t the kind of "super teacher" who connects automatically and easily with students. We might not possess a natural instinct for teaching, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be effective. What it means, instead, is that we have to think hard about our teaching, really do our homework, and labor continuously at it.

As they say, read the whole thing.

(And yes, I know the title is grammatically incorrect, but a grammatically correct title would sound utterly ridiculous.)