In 1880, an internal student at the Arsakeio, crying incessantly, demands the school to allow her to finish her studies. Family and economic reasons threaten to take this possibility away from her. In the face of the intensity of her emotions, the members of the board of the Philological Society agree to allow her to stay.

Why did so many girls at that time want to become teachers? What motivates them to cross the borders of the Greek state to work in unknown and unfamiliar places, in Adrianople, Odessa, Trebizond, and Serres?

The book explores the new educational and professional opportunities for women in Greece at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. It tracks how the Arsakeio teachers are formed as historical subjects, during the time when some of them take on the responsibility to teach the Greek language and instill Greek national consciousness in the populations of the disputed regions of the Ottoman Empire.

Based on data from public entities and organizations that have shaped educational matters in Greece and within the Greek Orthodox communities, it examines both the reasons of these entities and the first-person narratives of the female teachers. In other words, it follows some of the small stories and great wanderings of the girls who… want to become teachers when they grow up.