Time to hang up the skates

I decided it’s best to get out before my best-before date

After I finished, I packed up my briefcase, walked out into the hall and waited for something to happen.

It was 2:30 on a Monday afternoon and I had just given my last lecture at Western.

So, I stood there, with students rushing past me, wondering, “How do I feel? What do I think?”

Luckily, I was not asking these things out loud. Students expect you to be weird, but not babbling-outloud weird. Unless you’re in psychology, then all bets are off. (I’m kidding. Psych is fine. It’s philosophy where the real nuts are. I’m kidding again. Philosophy professors are also fine. I was even friends with a couple of them until they proved their own non-existence and were never seen again.)

The course had ended well enough. There was even a small outbreak of spontaneous applause, which is always better than a small outbreak of spontaneous booing. And a few students, mostly the keeners who sat in the front row, paused as they filed out to say, “Thank you.”

In the hallway, I lingered for a moment, smiling. I did feel something. It was relief. I had made it through another term, my last one.

I can’t exactly remember when I decided I would wind things up. One day, I just said to my wife, “I think I’m done. I think this year is my last.” This would have been a dramatic moment, but unfortunately she had gone to check on some laundry so I had bared my soul to the toaster.

At the time, I did not have a set of reasons for why I was done, I just sensed it. I was at Western for 16 years and enjoyed it immensely. Mostly, I taught smaller graduate classes in journalism, but about three years ago, I was asked to work up a brand new course on critical thinking and writing that would be mandatory for all first-year students in our program.

That’s how I found myself one morning standing at the base of a cavernous, tiered amphitheatre in front of about 300 students, mostly 17and 18-year-olds. Earlier, a colleague had given me some advice, “Don’t be nervous, just imagine them all in their pyjamas.”

This turns out to be unnecessary, as many of them have come to class dressed in what appears to be their pyjamas anyway. Rigged with a lapel mike, I roam up and down the stairs, speaking while my slides are projected onto two huge screens. In the first few rows, the students seem attentive. In the middle section, not so much. In the top tiers, several people are (and I am not making this up) sleeping.

I stand beside one student curled up and snoring and continue to deliver the lecture.

He does not wake up. Teaching young students is a privilege. It’s exciting. It is also hard work. I would tell people: a class is like an hour of bricklaying except you sweat more and at the end there’s nothing to show for it.

I liked teaching a lot, even teaching the first-years, but I could tell it was time — at least for me — to go.

What are the signs that it is time to hang up the skates? (Well, one is that you have actually started wearing skates to the office.)

You know it might be time to stop teaching when:

You have shoes older than your students.

It really hurts to reach up with the chalk to write on the blackboard.

You realize you are still using chalk and writing on a blackboard.

Even you have to admit that your PowerPoint slides would bore a room full of aging accountants.

You realize you are still using PowerPoint.

You say things like, “new music forms — such as rap” and a student points out that rap is several decades old.

You tell a story about Trudeau — and you mean the first one.

Everyone has a different best before date and it’s best to get out before that date. I’m happy with my decision. Now, some things are different: my only lectures are at the dinner table. And some things are the same: the kids usually fall asleep.