Like most people, I worked many jobs I hated over the years.
I had teachers in middle school, high school, and college who made my universe miserable for 50 minutes a day.
In academia, I discovered just how mean tenured faculty could be to teach other and their students.
And in previous teaching positions, I reported to people who cared more about the bottom line than human beings. Be they teachers or students.
(Don't get me wrong...there were good things, too. But that's not what this blog post's about. Don't want you to think I'm going all "Negative Ned" on you.)
But all put together, this was the greatest education I ever had.
What I have come to call an anti-education.
Learning what I don't want to be like when I grow up.
In grad school, the greatest thing I learned was that I don't want to teach college. Ironic, right?
From my previous teaching positions, I learned that a music school can be run well by doing the opposite of all of these places.
I wouldn't have come to these realizations had I ignored what was happening. Or, if I accepted that "this is normal" and carried on.
When things are hard or someone is being a jerk, ask yourself, "How can I reverse engineer this?"
You may be surprised at how much you learn.