Summer "supervisor" work done ... I hope

So, I am on campus--and I have papers strewn all over the floor, as I started to do the filing thing, waiting to hear from our area dean about summer session 2 classes (whether we needed to close any of them), but then I realized it was getting late and that if I didn't hear from the dean soon, I might miss her for today. I called, and we got that part sorted out. One adjunct also turned back a class for which he had already signed a contract, so Lori, our amazing office supervisor, helped me figure out what to do about that (had to put in a call to the labor relations person to find out how to undo a signed contract). Then I found someone else who can teach the class instead. Good.

I also graded the last paper for this past semester and calculated the student's final grade. I gave her a bit of a bump up to a B+ (she only missed it by a fraction)--mostly because it's summer and I'm feeling generous.

But the big stir these days is an early retirement incentive. It's a very limited time offer--as I may have mentioned: only available to the first 50 people who ask for it. I've had to talk with my financial planner, my family, several friends, a colleague or two ... and I still am having a very hard time making the final decision. Just about everything points to "you should do this"--including the fact that I've been saying for some time that if there were a financial incentive to leave, I'd take it--but ... well, it's just a hell of a mental adjustment to make, from the "if only" to "I can, but here's the reality."

The reality is less money than I'd ideally like, and a huge uprooting to a very different part of the country, not to mention suddenly having to change my identity. A friend once asked me, "What do you answer when people ask 'what are you?'"--as in "what do you do for a living"--but I said most people don't ask it that way: they usually ask, "What do you do?" But the answer, since 2001, has been the same: I'm a teacher. Yes, I'm an English professor--but that's a subset of the larger category "teacher." And being a teacher is something that is intrinsic to my soul, it seems.

Of course, there are a lot of different ways to be a teacher (and a lot of different things to teach). People have asked whether I'd have possibilities for adjunct teaching wherever I go, and the answer is, "Not really" (the only university I could find in Montana that's hiring adjuncts is in Bozeman, and I'll be on the other side of the mountains)--but furthermore, I've wanted to leave because I'm so completely frustrated with this kind of teaching: countering the truculence, arrogance, ignorance--and now just flat inability--of so many of the students. The fact that I can just have finished teaching a class as glorious as the SF was and still feel that resistance to the general tenor of our student body is an indication of my levels of burn-out.

So, yes: I'm almost certain I will take the retirement incentive. I may still back away from the edge--but if I do, I now realize that--financially--it would only make sense to do that if I stay until I'm 66: another four years. Could I manage that? Yes. Would I be happy doing it? No. It would be a choice made purely for financial reasons, nothing else. And generally speaking, I'm not highly money motivated. You see where this is trending.

But it isn't a done deal yet. I am going to write the requisite letters, stating my intention to retire, and then ... see what I do with them. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that I either have to send them tomorrow or wait until I'm back in town in three weeks--and hope that the 50 spots haven't been taken yet (assuming that in three weeks I haven't backed away from the brink and decided to slave away for another nine semesters, as I'd have to get through fall of 2022). So, well, we'll see. But although my friends and colleagues have universally had the "you can't go!" initial reaction, all of them have ended up saying, "you should take it." And it's still much harder than I anticipated. Very interesting. Very strange.

I have no idea how much I'll be posting this summer. Not as regularly as I did last summer, obviously, but I may post more as the summer goes on and I see how my fall semester is shaping up. Right now, neither of my literature electives looks very good. The online course will almost certainly run, and if the Native American Lit doesn't, I'll end up teaching a hybrid 101, which will mean cranking that out jiffy quick. But ... well, no telling now. And now, I need to get stuff off the floor and that letter written and printed. From there, we'll see.