Bill Glavin made a dubious career move when he accepted a teaching position at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Journalism was all he knew after attending Columbia’s graduate school of journalism, working at The Boston Globe and at a CBS television affiliate in Boston. All his friends told him he was crazy and expected him back in New York City within a couple years where he worked as an associate editor at Good Housekeeping.

In fact, Glavin kissed away an opportunity to become managing editor when he left the magazine and he knew it.

‘I was unhappy in New York,’ Glavin said. ‘It was much too big of a city and this opportunity just fell into my lap. I decided I should take it because I always wanted to teach.’

Glavin’s first two years were difficult. He had no idea how to fill class time and was always expecting to be fired. As the years went by, that concern slowly faded.

‘I figured I wouldn’t get tenure and I’d be back where I started,’ he said.

Thirty-six years later, Glavin is a frequent member of the Newhouse tenure committee. He never planned he’d be in Syracuse teaching journalism, but he is happier for it.

Last week, Glavin told this cautionary tale to his classes as he has every semester for the past 10 years. It has a happy ending here in Syracuse but it warns that a professional life can spiral out of control.

As one of Glavin’s students graduated about 10 years ago, she told him she’d make him proud by becoming an editor at a major magazine within a decade. That ambition reminded Glavin of his past and made him develop this lecture, one of the only times he talks of his personal life in class.

‘Whether or not I was proud of her shouldn’t measure her success,’ Glavin said. ‘I figured this was a good thing for students to hear because no one else is saying it to them. They should find things that make them happy.’

Had Glavin stayed in journalism, maybe he’d wear three-piece suits as Good Housekeeping’s publisher. Maybe he’d be at another top magazine in the City. No matter.

Glavin is at Syracuse earning a teacher’s salary padded only by longevity. And each summer, he’s able to travel to Montana to fly fish: something he truly enjoys.

‘I love casting a dry fly with no weight on the lure,’ he said. ‘Casting is what makes fly fishing for me because I throw all the fish back anyway.’

When I first heard Glavin’s story last spring, it made me realize there’s more to life than a prefix or a suffix to your name. I pass it on not as a disclaimer if I leave journalism but as a reminder that happiness is where you find it, even if that’s in Syracuse.

‘I like Syracuse,’ he said. ‘I spent two years in Washington and it was so mild it was like there’s no winter. There’s no sense of rebirth each spring … but what I like best about teaching is the students.’