Professor Sharon

I’ve been really reluctant to say “the last this…the last that….the last time…,” etc. in regards to my retirement.  It’s like saying my four month European trip for sabbatical was a “trip of a lifetime.”  The trip was certainly amazing, and some parts, okay maybe, many parts, cannot be repeated – but I never planned it to be the only or last time as so many others are wont to label it.   And, so I have felt the same way about these days leading to my retirement date.

Today was, though, without any doubts a “last.”   I taught the last class of the last course that I will be teaching as a full-time faculty at the college.  It’s a small 200 level early childhood class, and I had two people out very ill, and one student caught in Chicago on a return trip from a family event The numbers were really low.  Yet, it did indeed feel like a last.  Students shared their impressive final and large curriculum projects with each other, we ate one another’s treats that we brought in, and talked about what was the most important thing we’d learned.

Indeed it was a last.  I still don’t quite grasp the whole impact of this thing called retirement that I’m about to embark on; but today I really did understand that I was stepping onto a new road, a new ride, a new adventure to add to my trip of a lifetime.