retirement
I am retiring from SIUC when this term ends, on June 30 of this year, so this makes this week the last week 4 I will ever experience in CESL. I will miss CESL a lot; I've been here eighteen years, almost enough for a free gold parking sticker. I am moving to Lubbock TX where my wife will have a very desirable position at Texas Tech. While it is true that to some degree she is dragging me kicking and screaming out of here, I agreed also, because it was time for a change, and because I needed to be nearer to my parents who are in Las Cruces NM. While I was happy here and could easily have worked five or ten more years, I was beginning to feel like this pile (which you see below this post) was getting just a little too old. As I search through my papers I encounter old things and occasionally have the urge to post about them. I've actually had a lot of ideas that I've always wanted to post about, and millions of stories I could tell, stories from the trenches, so to speak, since basically I have just been teaching, and watching carefully, full time, for eighteen years. There is a lot I can say about teaching internationals. This blog could be a fount of new ideas, yet I've gotten a little tired, a little less likely to speak out, as time goes on. Another good reason to move. One thing I'd like to do is tell stories from the trenches here. Just stories. Life is interesting; in fact it's been great, I've loved every minute, I've been so busy, I've been literally unable to write it down. At Texas Tech I will teach Linguistics and an ITA course; I will also be a tutor in a writing lab. And even so it will only be three-quarters time and I may be home for the kids when they come home from school. I don't know what life will hold but I hope it will hold writing; this has been one of the better things I've done. I'm aware that not a huge audience actually reads this blog (for an accurate count, click on the little green button at the bottom). I've done very little to make it more commercial, or even more appealing. I've used it mostly for my own purposes, to collect my thoughts, to organize, to store information and ideas, and to talk about what I love, which is language and the process of learning one. I see no reason to change what I've been doing that way. It's not like I'm selling template ads or anything.
posted by tom @ 6:14 PM
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