Almost home ...

Another September.  You can feel the wind changing, smell the leaves starting to dry out.  The academic cycle starts anew and this year, I am sadly aware that my time within the Grove is drawing to a close.

Soon, too soon, the trees will weave that uncanny robe of yellows and browns, oranges and scarlet, with smoky green peeking out as the supporting warp threads.

And before I know it, it will be time to say goodbye.  

 I will have served my students and my university for 34 chronological years.  I arrived on campus in August of 1980, as a youthful, frisch gebackener Doktor from Toronto.  This silver-haired chap with the slight limp and stooped posture now searches with quiet unease for that robust, energetic young Ph.D. with the jet black hair  ... and Walther von der Vogelweide whispers in my ear: 

Owê war sint verswunden alliu mîniu jâr
Alas, where have all my years vanished?

ist mir mîn leben getroumet oder ist ez wâr.

Has my life been merely a dream or is it real?

The learners still excite me and the classroom still gives me life, but I grow weary more quickly now.  The residual glow of teaching evaporates faster than it used to, and I find myself getting lost in deeper, more fundamental thoughts of self and family.

There is a life for me beyond a career.  And there are young lives struggling to find a career, as long as I insist on clinging to a familiar position at the university.  At 64, I am still discussing video game theory with 20-somethings.  And that is surely just wrong.

Time to make way for someone closer in age to the learners, someone who has more credibility.

Have I affected teaching and learning at Brock?  Have I helped learners transform their world view?  Perhaps, perhaps not ... but once I have retired, will it really matter?  I meet younger colleagues on campus who express surprise: "Oh, you're still here!  I thought you had retired!" 

Some put great store in the word "legacy" and all that they believe it to purport.  With dignity and pride, I stand by my belief that legacy is like so many footprints in water.  When I do retire and it happens to be a Friday, I fully expect that on Monday, some young wag will venture, "Barry who?"  And that is how it must be.

I have done my job, and done it well; but I have been paid to do that job, and been paid well.

Draw a line under those columns.  There is nothing owing in either column of the ledger. 

I will take a final bow, gracefully, and with dignity. 

Time to go home.
I can feel it.  It is right.