When I was retiring from Snap, I worried about how I would answer the question “Soooo, what do you do?” I saw an article in the SLO Tribune that Cal Poly was looking for computer science lecturers, and teaching seemed like a good answer. Less evil-sounding than “tech executive,” but still a little fancy and intellectual.

I also hoped that teaching would replace the watercooler-esque collegiality I was used to in an office environment. You go to refill your coffee and discuss the latest episode of Lanterns or maybe a new paper by a frontier lab. The casual, unscheduled chats of peers.

I failed on both fronts.

“I teach at Cal Poly.”

“Oh, what’s your research in? What was your PhD in?”

“I’m an adjunct.”

“I’m sorry. I hope you’re able to land something better.”

“I do it for fun.”

“What?”

To avoid confusion, I’m tempted to just say:

I mostly spend my time raising my kids, and I lecture at Cal Poly part-time while they are in school, I don’t have a PhD, I started one but didn’t finish, my background is actually in the tech industry, and now I’m financially independent from that work, which puts me in the unusual position of adjuncting without personally feeling exploited by it, but I started teaching partly out of an existential desire for relevance, and partly because I thought it would make conversations like this easier and allow me to avoid the awkwardness of discussing the level of privilege my current life has, but it hasn’t worked…

The hope for thrilling watercooler conversations has also been almost entirely a failure. There isn’t some faculty lounge where professors are all carousing with their free coffee. There’s a closet with a broken espresso machine, next to a printer that works some-of-the-time, and just enough standing room for two people. People get in and out as quickly as possible, and when I do see people, I mostly don’t recognize them anyway.

Teaching didn’t just fail to give me what I thought I wanted. I’m also not the i’ve-never-heard-it-explained-so-well teacher I hoped to be. I’m not immune to the seduction of: “I’m paid a lot, so I must be good at what I do.” Or worse, “I’m paid a lot, so I must be good at whatever I do.”

It didn’t help that I was used to entering classrooms as a guest. Literally. My guest lectures were advertised, and excited students would show up to hear from someone who was currently in it. They were respectful, hanging on every word, and somehow I assumed that same universal amazement would follow me into my own classroom.

Instead, I sometimes get blank faces. Students show up late, fall asleep, or don’t show up at all. Too often, I’m just another professor teaching a class their degree planner says they need. I’m not exactly thinking, “Don’t you know who I am?” But I’m also not not thinking it.

Teaching met almost none of the expectations I had for it. What surprised me was how much I simply liked being a teacher anyway.

That’s humbling. But not in the way you might expect. I’ve failed to meet my own expectations plenty of times; that’s nothing new. Neither is being misread by other people. What is humbling is finding out that I was wrong about what would make a life feel worthwhile.

I enjoy the simple pleasures of building a class, writing assignments, and creating exams. Each is a little puzzle: how do you arrange things so that something clicks? I don’t always get it right, but even the failures can be fun because they give me something new to figure out and improve. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve always loved games and trying to understand how other people think.

This week, while I was waiting for the printer to be fixed, I remembered I have a small mail cubby. In it was a handwritten card from a former student who has since graduated, updating me on her life, telling me what she has coming up, and thanking me for the role I’ve played in it. I have a little stack of these cards, and I keep them on my desk next to artwork my own kids have made for me. I’ve been teaching long enough now that some former students still reach out, for advice or just to talk.

The fact that these small interactions mean so much to me is somewhat inconvenient. They call into question a lot of wisdom I dispensed pretty easily over the years. I used to tell people that the most important thing was prioritization. There are infinitely many things you can do, so focus on the places where you can provide the most leverage and get the highest return on your investment.

I still believe in prioritization. I’m less sure what deserves to be prioritized.

I coach soccer for my son. I’m not the best coach, but I’m there. I teach my own kids on their home days. Not because I think I’m the best possible teacher, but because I don’t think that can be the criterion for becoming involved. A lot of the things I value most now would have looked inefficient to my younger self.

There isn’t much leverage or scale in the things I spend my time doing now. I’m standing in front of 30 students, teaching them one class at a time. At home, I’m not reading bedtime stories to my impressive EBITDA or tucking in my amazing growth in MAU.

I drop my kids off at school and linger with parents I now know. This past weekend, we went to a birthday party for one of the kids on my son’s team. There are supper clubs and Dad’s Action-Book clubs. When I pick up milk at the grocery store, I run into people I know and stop to chat. All of it came from the deeply inefficient practice of showing up often enough that strangers stopped being strangers.

Four years into this new life, I still don’t have a satisfying answer to the question, “What do you do?” But I’ve found it matters less and less as fewer people know of me and more people know me.