As I work through the last five weeks of my role as assistant principal, I am starting to work myself into a place of being unneeded. I have known for a long-time that it would be hard to leave the great people that I work with. They are some of the most dedicated, loving individuals that I know, but I didn't realize how much my service to the school meant to me. The work that I have done for kids, teachers, and parents means a lot to me, and though I will be able to more of this work in another place, I am starting to have some odd emotions about being irrelevant here. There are probably ten events and ten things really left on my checklist, and I simultaneously crave finishing them and putting them off. It is a sure sign that my rhythm is off. I avoid summer camp syndrome, where you promise people that you will stay in touch or that you will visit for lunch. These things happen for a short time, and then they too fade into obscurity. I wonder what the final 25 days of a jail sentence feels like, new freedom, new fears.
I can empathize. When I left PHS after 32 years total in the building, my final days felt a bit like a wake. As it turns out, I was reborn...and never looked back. Life's too short to check the rear-view mirror.
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