The...End??

It's the end of another semester.

Really. THE END.

It's May 2016. (Or it was a week ago.) And only a few shorts weeks ago, I was offered the position of Director of Distance Learning for the college I've taught at for the last 13 years. (I've been there since before most of you were born. Some of you have been to my offices there quite often. Brooklynn, especially. I changed my very first diaper in my old DeQueen office. It was Trey's.) 

This means many things (the new job, not Trey's diaper):

1. I have turned to the Dark Side. From faculty to administration. I've been considering this move for a while now. I'm okay with it. They offered more cookies.

2. I will work ALL YEAR. My summers are gone. BUT--Poppa Don and I can go on a trip ANY TIME of year. If we wanna take off in the middle of October, we can.

3. I have to start driving to DeQueen again. So...I got a new car. Wanna see?

THE STORMCOOPER

Isn't that awesome? A Mini Cooper. With TWO sunroofs. And it has a CD player, and SiriusXM radio, and an auxiliary input jack, so I can listen to audiobooks, Hair Nation, and Spotify respectively. I'll still be able to practice singing and reach my yearly reading challenge. WOOHOO!!!

Now this one is important:

4. I will never teach in a classroom ever again. (Until further notice, of course. That ALWAYS changes as an educator.) I actually don't have to teach at all, but I opted to still teach Intro to Fine Arts: Music, and Technology for Teaching, both online. (I couldn't exactly leave Gen Ed high and dry to find THREE people to replace me...) And who better to teach Technology for Teaching than the Director of Distance Learning??

My last day in the classroom was May 4, 2016. Star Wars Day. Couldn't be more fitting. I wore the shirt a student gave me. (I told the kids at the first of the semester they could bring me Star Wars stuff and I'd give them extra credit. I didn't really expect any of them to do it, but I also got a Darth Vader coffee cup and a Chewbacca sticker out of the deal.) I brought cupcakes and cookies in celebration of both events. I lectured on the 20th century experimentalists, minimalism, and John Adams. Nothing like your last lesson listening to Doctor Atomic. Huh, Los Alamos. Funny...

Last Day as Classroom Teacher

This does however leave me with a bittersweet feeling of sadness. I've taught in front of a captive audience for almost 25 years. Will I miss it? 

Er...ah...Maybe. Uh...

"Miz Riddle, i just seen where i hav to rite like a collidge stoodint?"

Nope. Don't think so.

It was time to move on. And I could feel that building for quite some time. Because I was getting too comfortable. I was happy as a clam in my little routine of driving 20 miles every morning and sitting in my roomy office and answering email and grading the same assignments I've been grading for the last few years. All my classes were set up exactly the way I wanted them. Even Intro to Ed which I FINALLY finished this spring. I taught in the classroom only two days a week; the rest of the time I just....did what I did. It's really easy to get complacent, and there's only so many ways you can present Beethoven's Fifth Symphony over and over and over...

As a small two-year school, there's not much opportunity to teach any upper level Spanish or advanced music classes. Nor is there much else I could do with education classes; that stuff gets covered at the four-year level. So there'd I'd be: Amadeus...every fall, every spring. ¿Dónde está la biblioteca?

The euphoria of this new venture wore off after the first week and then I thought, "Oh @#$%, did I screw up?" Now I only have 6 weeks to do all of the summer projects I had on my list...(That's down to three, if I don't count the week we're taking a trip.) I'll still have summer school going on, but that's online and no different than it always has been. I've got figure out what to take with me to the new office in DeQueen. I still get to stay two days in Ashdown, so that helps with the traveling, but what to take? I've got a lot of crap in there.

What will I wear??? I've never had to go to work in the summer, not like that!!! New wardrobe!!! Shopping!!! Woohoo!!!

I will join the ranks of those who don't have the privilege of summer vacations, which I've basically had all my life really. Even when I worked in "the real world," as a file clerk, a manager trainee, Wal-Mart, I still never worked an entire summer full-time. People are thinking, "So??? Oh, woe is you." And that may be, but that's a big change in routine. Especially for the night owl in me (and Poppa Don) who always takes full advantage of any opportunity to stay up late and sleep in the next day. And for three months? Oh yeah!!

No more. Sad, really. 

There's so many other advantages though. Getting to take a trip at other times of the year, that works. Not being bound to seven classes and 120 students every semester, that works, too. More money? 'Nufsed.

So, how should I approach this new position? Sith Lord? Mother of Dragons? Borg?? Let me fire up my red lightsaber and give it some thought....