Retirement, Dec. 13, 2025

              I turned in grades for my last two classes a few minutes ago, and I mean quite literally my last classes.

            Give or take a few emails, I’m done with teaching after a college career of 36 years plus 3 years before that teaching middle school. I’ve been tired for several years and it’s time, though whether the money will last well enough is related to mortality tables and other factors over which my control—or my input—is limited.

            What’s good about retiring? I avoid grading, which has been an albatross hanging around my neck for 39 years. Constantly having to evaluate other people and be accurate, thoughtful, compassionate but not a pushover, and fair is terribly difficult and thankless. My brain has also been made tundra by the endless instances of uncritical thought and horrible writing I’ve encountered. But they are not endless, for now there will be no more, thank God.

            Students who have no motivation or are forced  along by parents or coaches or parole officers are no longer mine to inspire. Again, thanks be to God. Most of my students did not fit this category but those who did sucked the life out of me a drop at a time. Goodbye, people who did not want to be doing this.

            I’m also no longer subject to college bureaucracies, bean counters who have no sense of a college’s mission, and all but a few administrators. Several of those have been terrific but speaking historically, that’s not the way to bet.

            Meetings, gone. Work red tape, done. Commutes, entirely a thing of the past since I’ve been teaching mostly online since Covid anyway. Huge piles of pointless emails, nearly over—I have to monitor email for a little longer but that’s the only work-related task I have left.

            What will I miss, given this litany of horrors? Much.

            I’ll miss most of my students who have kept me thinking and engaged and lightly in touch with contemporary popular culture. I’ll miss especially the ones I could provoke into interest when they arrived with little, and most of all the ones who were curious and fascinated and asked questions from the start.

            The experience of working hard in a classroom to transcend the ordinary and watch their faces change as they understood or became interested or horrified or excited—nothing will replace that. The days that teaching worked well were so much fun I couldn’t believe they paid me. (Not that I got much.)

            I’ll miss my colleagues, most of them, more than they will ever know. I worked throughout my career with some of the best teachers and instructors and professors one can imagine, and I always looked forward to talking shop with them. And simply hanging out with smart and caring people.

            What’s next? I don’t know in detail, but volunteering and local travel and a few writing projects are on the horizon. I won’t be tutoring or anything resembling teaching. I’ve done my time.

            How do I feel? Nothing has sunk in yet. Ask me in a month or two when I’m not busy with the next semester. My life has been measured in semesters for so long that I’ll need to find a new rhythm, a fresh way to engage regularly with the world. I’ll still be helping Mom navigate being 91, and still be thinking and reading plenty about history and politics though I’ll no longer be teaching the subjects. But what will I do every morning instead of opening college email and the class portals?

            Something else. At last.