a.k.a. V.J.

Every early December and early May, it seems that a smattering of people who know that I teach part time will ask me if I’m done with the semester yet. If they catch me during the period between final exam week and when grades are officially submitted to the registrar, my stock answer is, “Well, I’m mostly done, but not done done.”

“Mostly done” status means I’m no longer showing up on campus to conduct a class or to proctor an exam, but I’m still working at grading final projects and exams, fielding desperate emails from students who waited until the eleventh hour to realize that maybe not doing a bunch of assignments might lead to a sub-optimal grade and are lobbying for some form of clemency, and then ultimately entering in the final grades. I don’t consider myself done done until I have:

1. submitted said grades;
2. checked them over a couple times to make sure they were entered correctly;
3. received the stern boilerplate email that goes out to faculty warning of the dire consequences of not getting the grades in by the deadline;
4. gone into the system to double-, triple-, and quadruple-check that mine are all in; and
5. seen that deadline for submission has officially passed and another semester is officially in the books.

I’m writing this the day after Step 5, so I’m happy to report that I am finally done done with Spring 2025. A summer of increased leisure time awaits. Then, in August, I’ll start fresh again with a new crop of students. Queue up that Lion King song about the circle of life.

Speaking of generational succession, a couple weeks ago, my boss was meeting with someone at a local ad agency who turned out to be a former student of mine from a couple years ago. It was gratifying to learn that one of my students had embarked on a career directly related to things she had learned about in my class. A few days after that, one of my current students, a graduating senior, excitedly told me that he had just been offered a job set to start the Monday after commencement. It was a very good entry-level position that was also directly related to the content of my class.

I fully realize that I didn’t have much at all to do with either success story. Both of those students would certainly have had the same or similar outcomes if they had an instructor other than me for those classes. Still, it does feel good to have played a role in a young person’s success journey, even if it was only a microscopic role. In biological terms, an organism’s primary function is to ensure that there is a next generation of like organisms, thereby continuing the species. Teaching is a bit like that. I’m aiding in the development of the next generation of marketers to go out into the workforce and fill the kinds of roles that I’ve been filling for the past 35 years…at least until AI makes all of us obsolete.

Now, I find myself at the stage of my career where I’ve progressed about as far as I’m going to. I’m an old dog, who might occasionally learn a new trick, but mostly thinks things were better back in the old days. Retirement is no longer a distant abstraction, but rather an endgame that I think about with increased regularity. In the meantime, I’m still out there passing along what knowledge I can to new waves of my generation’s eventual replacements.

I’m mostly done, but not quite done done.