The Turbulent Summer of 2024

The summer of 2024 was tough. I felt like my time as a professor had come to an end. The program I helped build was handed off to new leadership and I was starting (or re-starting) a career as a K-12 science teacher. I contemplated retirement, but the numbers did not add up. So I took the dive back into education, and I am so glad I did. The journals (and excerpts from journals) below trace the days of my turbulent summer and give you glimpse of the struggles I had. I originally hand-wrote them, so I picked out a few of the entries I could read and those I felt like the reader could relate to. I may write something similar about my summer of 2026 as I retire from Texas, become a Louisiana resident, and transition back into academia in the fall of 2026.

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June 8, 2024

How do you know when you have done your job at a place and it is time to move on? It sounds simplistic, but you just know.

Doors close and don’t reopen.

Connections break that cannot be unbroken.

You feel the job you came there to do has not necessarily been completed, but you have done all that is in your power to do.

Is it easy? Absolutely not!

But it is necessary and sometimes it is best to rip the band-aid off than to watch it fester and grow stagnant out of your view.

Some broken things are not fixable, and even if a feeble attempt is made, you will never look at them the same again. That broken coffee cup may be glued back together, but you always see the crack and remember when it was dropped. Yes, it still holds coffee, but it is not the same cup. Neither are you the same

Yet through the pain, there is solace in knowing an end date to your time. Knowing when that burden is lifted and new work begins.

Did you do all that you could have done? There is no answer to that question, but you at least acknowledge that you “fought the good fight.”

Close the door, do not look back, and gently walk into your future.

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Excerpt from June 9, 2024

…Nothing can change the impression some have had on me. Nor would I want to forget those friends and memories I have made.

We are always better for having others’ impressions on us, and we leave our share of marks on their souls…

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Excerpt from June 13, 2024

I like the space before – the time before you start a new venture.

At that time there are limitless possibilities in our forward view.

…Right now I am neither a success nor a failure. I am in that glorious limbo of basking in hopefulness. It is the calm before the storm. Just before sunrise.

But I know I cannot stay there – time pushes me to act. To pull the trigger. To execute the plan.

That is when the true purpose is fulfilled and the clock starts ticking again. The future begins now.

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June 28, 2024

Do we really long for transformation, or do we just pay it lip service?

I have read all the biographies, and I see their metamorphoses, but do I just think – “good for them!”?

Do I really believe that I can change into something I am not? It would be so easy to stay in the chrysalis with warmth and an abundant food supply and never change into the butterfly.

But the larva has no choice but to change or it will die – stasis is not an option.

So the question arises – what will I change into? It know it takes time, and when I emerge it will be awkward. I must grow into my wings; inhabit them before I can fly.

There is more self-doubt to come – but I must push through it.

To stay the same means certain death.

I am ready to fly.

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Excerpt from July 24, 2024 (Note the foreshadowing)

…I can’t help but feel like the past 11 years have been a fever dream.

I presented in England, Portland, and a number of different cities through ASTE, and at least 4 visits to Washington D.C.

I faced my giants, and the perils of higher education and actually completed the tenure process. How many school teachers can say they did that and then return to the K-12 arena?

I feel blessed to have seen it all and there is always a possibility that I will return to it. But for now I am coming back to my first love of teaching, and excited to actually try and practice what I have preached to my preservice teachers for the past 11 years.

Time to learn, and relearn, how to be a teacher. I want to learn from my much younger peers and also be a mentor when I can and distribute a bit of the wisdom I have accumulated in all my years in the profession.