What Does a Professor Do?

What does a professor do all day? Many people think a professor just gives lectures and goes home. The truth is more interesting.

A professor works at a university. In the morning, she often teaches. She stands in front of a hundred students and explains a difficult idea until it feels simple. After class, students wait with questions, and she answers every one.

But teaching is only half of the job. A professor also does research. She reads, she runs experiments, and she looks for new knowledge that nobody has found before. Sometimes the work takes years. Sometimes it leads nowhere, and she starts again.

In the afternoon, she usually reads essays. Her students write about books, history, or science, and she marks each essay and writes careful notes in the margin.

So a professor teaches, but she also learns every day. Education, it turns out, never really stops — not even for the teacher.