Not Retiring. Just Daring...Again!

I’ve had a few panicked college students come to me for coaching saying, “ I had to get in. I heard you were leaving!”

I’ve tried to reassure them, and maybe myself as well.

?“I’m not leaving”, I say. “I’m just reinventing.”?

I explain that I’ll still be teaching and coaching once we hire my successor as the Director of Career Services for Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University.

Even my own 87 year old mother asked me, “Are you sure you want to leave this job?”

“Not leaving mom!”, I explain, perhaps a little too emphatically to make the point. ? “Yes, technically, retiring, whatever that means.”?

If you are a boomer like me, perhaps on the cusp on this next move, you’ve contemplated this “retirement” thing. Not taking a paycheck with benefits. Not going someplace or reporting in Monday-Friday as we have our entire adult lives.

I’ll admit, this change is as daunting for me as it is for some of my students terrified of launching from college to career no matter how well they’ve prepared. There are sometimes tears involved with students. It’s emotional, this fear of the unknown. The “what’s next?”?

I remind myself and my students, all change can be overwhelming, unnerving.?

“I’m not ready”, some say.

I talk it out with my students; saying out loud, ?all the amazing adventures ahead of them. I remind myself of the same. My student workers and I are calling my impending retirement, “graduation”. ?I like that.?

I taught my first media performance class this past semester and realized how much I love a new challenge, how much I love teaching. This retirement/reinvention allows me time to open the door again to more new, more learning, more challenges. More time for grandchildren, writing, speaking and travel; all the stuff that feeds my soul.

And I just know; it’s time, to “do the new” once again. I know this from a full life of experience including "a year of firsts" that changed everything for me. ?And so I can confidently reassure my students, they too can do “do the new”.

?“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” I love this quote and share it ?with my students frequently. It works for my fellow boomers too and anyone else “graduating” and reinventing.?

Bring it 2024! Happy New Year and dare on.