Academia: So You Want to Teach? Key Lessons for a Completely. . . Will Linn, PhD

Employment for mythologists and archetypal experts is an ever-evolving landscape. Having worked for schools, studios and not-for-profits as a professor, administrator and creative over the last ten years—my first ten years after the PhD—I would like to share a set of discoveries with those on a similar path. There are three main things I want to share. Primarily, I want to help you down the curve of understanding our value to art schools—how to describe what we can offer, the pros and cons of teaching at an art school, application do’s and don’ts, expectations and so on.  I also want to speak about the importance of taking the indirect path into your career. Direct paths rarely lead anywhere interesting. I want to encourage you to grow your professional life by growing your own interests. Lastly, I want to acknowledge that we can all have a tremendous amount of anxiety around the challenges of chasing our dreams and pursuing employment. Inner reality can get very active on this journey. Whatever our complexes or patterns, we are all at risk of responding to mistakes and dropped balls with paralysis and reactionary movements. This is why it is so important to remember that we are all in this boat—all pursuing and dreaming and failing and finding our way. Being cool and being loving—to ourselves and to others—makes a difference on the road.

Location: Room #D-102

Will Linn, PhD, creator and mythologist, is the founder of mythouse.org and Head Mythologist for Fascinated by Everything—a visionary experience company that creates narrative art in next-generation mediums. For three seasons and thirty episodes, he anchored the Sky, ZDF and History Channel TV show, Myths: The Greatest Mysteries of Humanity as one of the two recurring “meta experts.” Will served as a leader for the Joseph Campbell Foundation over an eight year period and was the founding chair of an innovative film and performing arts college called Relativity School in Los Angeles Center Studios. From 2015-2023, he taught myth, anthropology, writing, story and philosophy at the college while leading high school, graduate and professional coursework in the United States and Europe. His media and conference appearances, publications, Myth Salons and collaborative projects are focused on the poesis of nature and technology, transformational meta-narratives, historical arcs in the mythic imagination and journey of meteor-steel.