Why do I feel like I'm dying?
The end of any school year is difficult. There are grades to turn in (late), awards to hand out, yearbooks to sign. And, of course, commencement.
I enjoy commencement exercises. I sometimes listen to commencement speeches online. I'm not even graduating, I just like the inspirational thoughts that the speaker drops on a very inattentive (or, if you're Mike Pence, non-attending) audience. I've been in school, in one form or another, for approximately twenty-six years. It's my career and my passion, and I learn in order to teach better. So learning from the wisdom of the speakers--gaining motivation and inspiration from them--is a natural part of not only the end of the year, but of how I try to become better.
So why do I feel like I'm dying?
At our school, we have an annual tradition in which the faculty challenges the students' quidditch team. I coach the team all year long so that we're ready for this finale. (For the record, we won today, 140 to 110.) We do this for a couple of reasons, but one of them is to give the entire student body something to do outside (watch or participate in the game) while the yearbook check out procedures get set up. That means that the game is high stakes and there are hundreds of people watching. It's a tradition going back six years, now.
Today was the last time I expect we'll do it. Due to personal circumstances, my own worry and fear of another catastrophic injury happening to one of my students, as happened a few years ago, and a general decline of interest in the sport at the school, I decided that I couldn't continue coaching the program. Saying goodbye to my defeated students, thanking them for their sacrifice, their work, their sportsmanship proved harder to do than I anticipated. Some of them knew it was coming--I'd been gesturing that direction for some time now--but it was still hard, I think, to see the sport that they were coming to love go away.
For me, this has been a secondary heartache. I've talked about the sport before, how it's an unexpected thing in my life, but I don't know how to handle it. That ignorance led me to stop playing with my friends in Salt Lake, only occasionally heading out to a practice or two whenever I had the time. But I was happy to still have quidditch in my life via playing with students at the school. (Heck, I was even interviewed by the Guardian once to talk about quidditch, talking up its power in kids' lives and how much fun it is. So I know that it's important to have something that people like and want to be a part of.)
And now I've walked away from that, too.
Maybe that's why I feel like I'm dying.
I'm not a crying-emotional kind of guy. There are some things that will get the waterworks flowing, but I don't usually sit down and cry too often. Walking off the pitch for what is, so far as I can see, the last time, has me struggling.
Part of it is that I feel like I'm letting some of the students down. In fact, I know I'm letting some of the students down. One player wrote on a piece of paper that doubled as my yearbook, "In my life teachers have filled the role of parents so it's really rough when I lose a good one."
The end of the year requires saying goodbye. Always to the senior class, of course, but there are other departures. Friends who've worked with me for a few months or maybe a few years, seeking out to find another place to fit in, changing and choosing their lives. Students who won't be coming back because of sundry reasons.
This idea of saying goodbye makes me scared. I don't know how to say goodbye to a job I love. Everything I've done before this school ended...um...poorly. Walking out with hardly any previous notice, it feels like I burned every bridge I was supposed to maintain in the career world. I can't see myself leaving my school, yet I will...someday. How am I supposed to say goodbye?
I think there's a part of me that's dying.
I'm a couple hours away from being at my school's tenth annual commencement ceremony. The school year has come to an official, resounding close. I'm ending my time as a department chair. I've said farewell to many of my students, either from the class or from the school. It's coming to that temporary end that punctuates the year right in the middle of it. Things will be similar next year, but also not, the strange paradox of existence that makes it painful and something we never want to lose.
Saying goodbye to another school year is perennially bittersweet, and my greatest worry is that I won't be able--for whatever reason--to ever truly bid farewell to this place. I don't know how to leave a job gracefully, to say nothing of a career.
Again, I don't think I'm leaving my job. I've signed a contract, I'm planning a new course. There's nothing that would indicate that it's over for me. But how can you picture the final chapter of your own life? Am I going to be here, faded notes from students, scrawled in their juvenile penmanship still pinned to my walls, surrounded by the familiar gray walls, twenty years from now? Am I to be the permanent fixture here, a living statue of a time beyond the memory of any of the students who pass through my class? How will I know that I've stopped mattering?
Today, I have to say goodbye, as I have done the last nine years. In a way, I guess that's a bit why I feel like I'm dying.
The end of any school year is difficult. There are grades to turn in (late), awards to hand out, yearbooks to sign. And, of course, commencement.
I enjoy commencement exercises. I sometimes listen to commencement speeches online. I'm not even graduating, I just like the inspirational thoughts that the speaker drops on a very inattentive (or, if you're Mike Pence, non-attending) audience. I've been in school, in one form or another, for approximately twenty-six years. It's my career and my passion, and I learn in order to teach better. So learning from the wisdom of the speakers--gaining motivation and inspiration from them--is a natural part of not only the end of the year, but of how I try to become better.
So why do I feel like I'm dying?
At our school, we have an annual tradition in which the faculty challenges the students' quidditch team. I coach the team all year long so that we're ready for this finale. (For the record, we won today, 140 to 110.) We do this for a couple of reasons, but one of them is to give the entire student body something to do outside (watch or participate in the game) while the yearbook check out procedures get set up. That means that the game is high stakes and there are hundreds of people watching. It's a tradition going back six years, now.
Today was the last time I expect we'll do it. Due to personal circumstances, my own worry and fear of another catastrophic injury happening to one of my students, as happened a few years ago, and a general decline of interest in the sport at the school, I decided that I couldn't continue coaching the program. Saying goodbye to my defeated students, thanking them for their sacrifice, their work, their sportsmanship proved harder to do than I anticipated. Some of them knew it was coming--I'd been gesturing that direction for some time now--but it was still hard, I think, to see the sport that they were coming to love go away.
For me, this has been a secondary heartache. I've talked about the sport before, how it's an unexpected thing in my life, but I don't know how to handle it. That ignorance led me to stop playing with my friends in Salt Lake, only occasionally heading out to a practice or two whenever I had the time. But I was happy to still have quidditch in my life via playing with students at the school. (Heck, I was even interviewed by the Guardian once to talk about quidditch, talking up its power in kids' lives and how much fun it is. So I know that it's important to have something that people like and want to be a part of.)
And now I've walked away from that, too.
Maybe that's why I feel like I'm dying.
I'm not a crying-emotional kind of guy. There are some things that will get the waterworks flowing, but I don't usually sit down and cry too often. Walking off the pitch for what is, so far as I can see, the last time, has me struggling.
Part of it is that I feel like I'm letting some of the students down. In fact, I know I'm letting some of the students down. One player wrote on a piece of paper that doubled as my yearbook, "In my life teachers have filled the role of parents so it's really rough when I lose a good one."
The end of the year requires saying goodbye. Always to the senior class, of course, but there are other departures. Friends who've worked with me for a few months or maybe a few years, seeking out to find another place to fit in, changing and choosing their lives. Students who won't be coming back because of sundry reasons.
This idea of saying goodbye makes me scared. I don't know how to say goodbye to a job I love. Everything I've done before this school ended...um...poorly. Walking out with hardly any previous notice, it feels like I burned every bridge I was supposed to maintain in the career world. I can't see myself leaving my school, yet I will...someday. How am I supposed to say goodbye?
I think there's a part of me that's dying.
I'm a couple hours away from being at my school's tenth annual commencement ceremony. The school year has come to an official, resounding close. I'm ending my time as a department chair. I've said farewell to many of my students, either from the class or from the school. It's coming to that temporary end that punctuates the year right in the middle of it. Things will be similar next year, but also not, the strange paradox of existence that makes it painful and something we never want to lose.
Saying goodbye to another school year is perennially bittersweet, and my greatest worry is that I won't be able--for whatever reason--to ever truly bid farewell to this place. I don't know how to leave a job gracefully, to say nothing of a career.
Again, I don't think I'm leaving my job. I've signed a contract, I'm planning a new course. There's nothing that would indicate that it's over for me. But how can you picture the final chapter of your own life? Am I going to be here, faded notes from students, scrawled in their juvenile penmanship still pinned to my walls, surrounded by the familiar gray walls, twenty years from now? Am I to be the permanent fixture here, a living statue of a time beyond the memory of any of the students who pass through my class? How will I know that I've stopped mattering?
Today, I have to say goodbye, as I have done the last nine years. In a way, I guess that's a bit why I feel like I'm dying.