Can we creatively bring our intellectual interests to bear on how we talk about teaching? Can our teaching shape how we understand and go about our scholarship? This article addresses and attempts to bridge the scholarly and the pedagogical imperatives of our profession through the methodically unmethodical process that Theodor Adorno identified as central to the literary essay. Composed in two parts, each with a distinct voice, the article performs the very kind of non-traditional scholarship it calls for by considering what it is we do and what it is we are as teachers from a phenomenological perspective.