This autoethnographic account is an opportunity for the author to reflect on the ‘classroom within’ as she transitions out of higher education and leaves academia behind. This ‘critical autoethnography’ (Boylorn and Orbe 2022; Iosefo, Holman Jones and Harris 2021) maps out a journey of teaching in/through/across universities and practical-professional settings. It highlights the tensions experienced by the author in relation to her core (teaching) values, the expectations of the academy, and the expectations of colleagues, and students (aka ‘customers’) in the context of the marketisation of higher education, and the implementation of audit culture to ‘measure’ academic performance. In making sense of this journey, the concept of ‘wayfinding’ is employed. For Hatton (2021; abstract), critical autoethnography provides us with a ‘methodological wayfinding’ and ‘enables deep consideration of the footprints that shape our present, where new conversations between eras and cultures become possible’. The autoethnography surfaces the struggle(s) experienced in attempting to ‘hold on’ to core values while meeting the external expectations and values of the institutional and higher education system (Lumsden 2023). It is a story of renewal and (re-)discovery, and the crafting of new, and revisiting of old, academic and teaching identities.