I was born to teach because of my enthusiasm for my subject and my strong desire to enlighten others. Everything else would come naturally as the class progressed.
I arrived for the first class with a stack of handouts and the blind confidence of the inexperienced. Although some of my colleagues intended to spend the first class checking attendance, reviewing the class syllabus, and then concluding early, I intended to waste no time. I had a great deal of wisdom to impart and needed every moment of class time, including this first session. That first day could not have been a greater disaster. My classroom was filled, not with eager students waiting for my brilliance, but with a maintenance crew trying to stop a leak in the roof. Because the leak had just been reported, the crew was preoccupied with stopping it and had no time to talk to me. Since I had concentrated solely on my academic responsibilities, I did not know who to call to arrange a new room assignment. By the time one was arranged, class time was already more than half over.
Nevertheless, I tried to move ahead. My fear of public speaking had passed in the aggravation of the moment; however, I still had to deal with the distraction of students wandering in throughout class, asking me to sign their course cards or simply trying to find the class. The new room had no overhead projector, forcing me to use the blackboard and to repeat much of my material. At the end of that first day, I had completed less than a third of the material I had planned. Worse, I had failed to impress my students with either my authority as a teacher or my ability to deal with a crisis.
One of the essential lessons of self-preneurship is that a manager must become self-sufficient. My employers would evaluate my performance in a general way, but they would not be there to tell me what to do if the ceiling literally caved in. By the time the class resumed two days later, I had...