Last night was Nephew #3’s final choir performance, which brought his high school performance career to an end. There’s a lot of construction going on at his school this year so the auditorium wasn’t available. Instead, the concert was in the great hall of a nearby university.
It was an interesting pairing. Being the last concert of the year, it was the last concert period for all of the seniors, and there were many moments and songs meant to acknowledge the emotional send-off with only days of high school left before they all move on to whatever comes next for them. Many of them, according to the senior slide show, have college plans in their futures. I’m sure it wasn’t lost on many of them that they were performing at a college, and surrounded by a very different environment than a high school auditorium would have been. As difficult as an evening as it was for so many of them, which was evident from all of the tears that were shed, it’s a beautiful stage of life they’re at, each about to move on to a new horizon that is all their own.
Earlier in the week, my teaching partner was meeting with a finance guy during our lunch. He’d set up in the lounge during the day to be available to set up retirement programs for anyone interested. She’d been meaning to get to it this year, so it was a great time to check important box on the to-do list. It was the catalyst for a few discussions about retirement this week, especially since we had another colleague celebrating with a retirement party Friday after school.
It got me thinking for the first time, at least in a tangible manner, that my retirement is now about ten years away, give or take a year or two. Putting the money aside, that’s a pretty big thing to consider — to face that this thing I’ve been doing now for nearly 30 years will be coming to an end, and probably sooner than I’ll expect.
Has my life or my career gone the way I thought it would, either back in my nascent days of college or when I was setting up my own retirement program, which happened so long ago I can barely remember not having one?
This time of the school year is usually reflective for me, even more so this year with my nephew finishing high school and so many of my friends moving on to different schools and experiences next year. I think about all the things that went well, specific happy memories I’ll keep, but also the frustrations and failures I encountered. (Whether it’s fair or not, I probably focus more on the those.)
All I can do at this point is hope I made a difference. With any luck, the students I worked with will remember me well instead of spending their adulthood cursing out what a bastard I was. More importantly, and what would honestly be the most important to me, would be that they’ll remember things I helped them learn. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t even remember where that knowledge came from, because it will become a second nature part of who they are.
We had a talk with our classes on Friday about the importance of ending the year with positivity. Isn’t it so much better to end on high notes instead of go through the last days with people bothering each other and having to live with the consequences of negative decisions on their ways to middle school? I hope they see it that way. I’d want them to have that ending.
After that ending happens, my mind will shift over to slowly getting ready for the next class to start in the fall.
At least for a few more years.
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