The Final Post

"Now we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular, even though the herd may go, 'that's baaaaad.'"

One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, Dead Poet's Society. I've thought much about that movie this past week, even though a John Keating I most certainly am not. This will be the last entry to what I hope was an entertaining, informative, objectively opinionated (ha) look into the life of a Community Director. It has to be the end, because the Community Director has a life no longer. Hmm, no...poorly worded. Rather, the life I live from this point forward will never again intersect with the hall I used to manage. My life as a Community Director is gone. Poof. Kaput.

I wanted to post this last entry in order to say goodbye in the best way I could manage and to make sure that a few things were understood. I LOVED this job. For almost a decade I stayed, year after year after year, because I knew that I was making a difference. I try to remain modest, but I am also being honest when I say that I HAVE CHANGED LIVES. I have made a difference in a way that many people will never be able to understand. I did not discover the cure for cancer. I did not make the lame walk, or part the Red Sea. But I have ignited passions, shaped dreams, mitigated disasters, and helped the quiet find their own voice. I did these things, and I did them well. I did them in the company and with the assistance of great colleagues and mentors whom I wouldn't trade for anything on this earth. They have made me a better man.

History teaches us that the we graduates (and not-so-graduates) refer to our universities as our Alma Mater, and if I may be so bold as to borrow from Robertson Davies: "the college is truly an Alma Mater, a Bounteous Mother, and from one breast she gives her children the milk of knowledge and from the other the milk of salvation and good doctrine." The small part I played on this campus was in guiding my residents as they attempted to face the children they once were on their way to becoming the men they were meant to be. In many ways I stood in loco parentis, but I've always believed that it was impossible for a university or anyone in it to truly stand in place of the parents. I consider myself a little more of a big brother. Having walked many of the same roads, I can tell you where the potholes are when it's raining, or at least hand you a towel to dry yourself off afterwards.

Although I am sure that this will not be the last time I ever help anyone, my time as a guiding force is largely over, or at least on hold. Someone else will have the reins here, and by the end of the semester these freshmen will barely remember that I existed. I don't feel too badly about it however, because I suppose deep down I know that it is time for me to leave. As much as I have always loved my residents and this university, the atmosphere is becoming increasingly toxic and it was increasingly difficult to be the best that I could. I was a Community Director. Not a police office or a father, no matter how badly some may have felt that I needed to be both. But the time for criticism is past. I have boxes I need to pack, a UHaul that I need to load and a road I need to get on.

Don't be mistaken. I am saddened that it has to end like this, but I refuse to let this keep me down. The dreams I dream are too vibrant, radiant and full of daring to be shut down by the petty affairs of small men in off-the-rack suits and hand-me-down principles. I have no time for them; there's nothing they can do for me.

My termination from this university is a minor setback. I'm going... wherever I end up, to lick my wounds and plan anew. To take some time and listen to the universe, and set sail in whatever direction the sun is pointing when I decide to open the door again. Much less poetically, I am leaving this blog and beginning again somewhere new. Slainte.

"Two roads diverged in the wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."


All opinions here are as they have always been...entirely my own. And...if I may be permitted one last "teachable moment." To my residents, past and present, to those I will never know, Be not another if thou canst be thyself.