The Year I Almost Quit, and Didn’t

A messy end of year inventory from inside the classroom

If you want to understand how it feels to teach in a business school today, try this: burn your toast, spill coffee on your only clean shirt, open five different apps to enter the same date in five different calendars, then walk into a room of students - half of whom are scrolling Instagram, the other half politely waiting for ChatGPT to do the assignment for them. And that’s before 9:10 AM.

I came very close to quitting this year.

Not because of the students. Not even because of the AI. But because I’m tired of the system pretending it’s still functioning while everything around it breaks in slow motion. I’ve had to explain to students why they need to think, while the school refuses to ban open internet access during in-class work. How do you teach anything real when your audience is outsourcing comprehension to a tab next to Netflix?

And then there’s admissions. Let’s not sugarcoat it: too many students should not be here. Admissions departments chasing quotas are filling classrooms with tourists. It’s killing curiosity and replacing it with entitlement (and ruins the experience for the one’s that have always dreamed to be here). That nonchalance, that arrogance, that open disrespect - it’s not a mystery. It’s a design flaw.

I’ve been an adjunct for over a decade. The only people who talk to me are the security guards and cleaning staff - the only ones around when I arrive, and still there when I leave. The cafeteria food has gotten so bad that I now consider a triangle sandwich a gourmet item. Syllabi are so overstuffed that real class participation is nearly impossible, outcomes suffer, and yet the pressure to pass students keeps rising. The quiet nudges, the backroom whispers, the subtle nods to “just let it slide” - it smothers standards and guts the meaning of grades. That’s how a school’s value gets hollowed out. And if that wasn’t enough, I haven’t had a single euro of raise in eight years. This, despite sitting in the 97th percentile in student evaluations. It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing. And it’s starting to rot something at the core.

Don’t even get me started on admin. Hundreds of startups have revolutionized basic business processes, but in business schools, we’re still copy-pasting class schedules by hand. Most courses have ten sessions. Multiply that by five courses. Change one date, and the whole thing collapses like a bad Jenga tower. Grading? School’s use Excel. And every time I open their sheets, I feel like I should be issued morphine. Blackboard and Moodle look like they were coded in the Nixon era. Classrooms? The AC rattles like a haunted fridge. The projectors belong in a VHS museum. The Wi-Fi works for exactly one student, and always the one watching F1 highlights mid-discussion. I pay for most of the tools I use (Notion, Slack, Pitch, Miro, Typeform…) just to make this chaos vaguely functional.

And yet.

Something keeps pulling me back. It’s not nostalgia. It’s not loyalty. It’s the moment a student says, “I didn’t know I could think like this.” It’s watching a shy kid stay after class to pitch me their startup idea, eyes lit up, hands shaking. It’s the weird, messy, wonderful tension of seeing something click - not because I gave them the answer, but because I didn’t.

I believe in students. More than ever. They’re overwhelmed, distracted, skeptical, but they’re also smart, sensitive, and bursting with questions no one is letting them ask. They feel the world shifting beneath their feet. They know something has to change. And when they sense that you’re not just teaching a class - but fighting for something real - they show up. And that is what brings me back. Every damn time.

I almost walked away this year. And maybe one day I will. But not yet.

Because every time I get close to giving up, one of them gives me a reason not to. A question I wasn’t expecting. A team that suddenly clicks. A little defiance in their eyes that says, “I want this to matter.”

This job isn’t about comfort. It’s about consequences. I still believe the classroom is one of the last places where change can start quietly, dangerously, beautifully - one student at a time. And for now, that’s enough.

That’s why I’ll be back. Not because the system works. But because the spark still does.

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PS. If you’re one of my students reading this - yes, I saw you trying, even when you thought I didn’t. You are the reason I show up. And the reason I still believe.