Some people dream about retirement as heaven; I see it as hell. I do not wish to retire. I am only 80 and have been a college professor for a mere 56 years. I’m a workaholic and I have every reason to continue. My office is my Shangri-La. In a small space, it is a mini-museum of an entire career—2,000 books, plaques for well beyond a dozen teaching and scholarship awards, many photographs, travel mementos from around the world, and artifacts of every kind. All organized and I know where everything is. I look around and remember. And there is much to remember. Students from across the institution sometimes drop in just to marvel at what this office says about a career. I once wrote an article on one’s office as a teaching tool.

I’m a fairly ordinary guy. My degrees would not raise any eyebrows—undergraduate from a directional-named tertiary regional university, Ph.D. from my home-state Midwestern university. A tour in Vietnam and church-related travels all over the globe add some zest. I have had some successes in the academic world—books, lots of articles, some wider recognition and campus leadership roles. I’ve been department chair for 35 years; “it is a small place.” I’ve had some offers all the way up to a presidency inquiry. I’ve spurned them all. 

I am a teacher, the highest calling in this human existence and at a place best suited for my practice. A colleague called our role “a slice of heaven breaking into this earthly realm.” He was right. It isn’t what I do; it is who I am. Back when I began graduate school, jobs in my discipline were plentiful. My early predecessors scrambled for prestigious appointments and got them. I declared from day one that what I wanted was a small liberal arts college where I could affect students’ lives. Some accused me of low aspirations. My adviser proclaimed, “You can do better than that.” However, things changed for historians dramatically in the mid-1970s, and the opportunities, prestigious and other, dried up. But I was fortunate; my desires came about.

Teaching is about mentoring students. And I have had my share. Of the majors, at least, I remember almost all of them, now in the upper hundreds. They have done well. I’m committed to that. I remember from my first year, my first high-profile student received a prestigious national Ph.D. award. I was ecstatic. She retired many years ago as a prominent scholar and provost. And I am just as enthusiastic about the several graduates from this past spring who went on to top graduate and professional schools and good career opportunities.

I am proud to hope that I have played a role in their becoming. If it is my fortune, they will join the ranks who check in periodically, send cards and letters, get married (and divorced), have kids, and come by to see me occasionally. Maybe it is just to confirm if the old man is still alive. I have several second-generation majors and a couple of third-generation ones—again, “it is that kind of place.” I have stories about their parents and grandparents, a bit disconcerting to their elders. I’m a storyteller and I have an almost inexhaustive supply. I’ve lived a lot of life, and this is a tool to employ in speaking to new generations of students. We travel quite a bit, and every place we go, every book read, movie watched, indeed every experience, I approach didactically. How does this become part of my classroom and student learning?

I’ve heard the cliché that we should teach learning to think, not what to think. Yes, but we also have a greater responsibility. I’m not tolerant enough to accept that genocide is OK, rape is just fine or that the world is flat and John F. Kennedy is alive in a hospital in Dallas. That is the antithesis of intellect. I have little patience for conspiracy theorists or patent immorality, even if there is a lot of both going around. Our goals must be higher, our expectations more worthy.

But it isn’t just about the students. I’ve hired several department members, selected to perpetuate the purposes we want to achieve. My job is to model the norms and culture that have made us successful and for my colleagues to achieve their best selves. The greatest tribute that I have received in my career was from a now-deceased member of the department who proclaimed, “His greatest strength as a leader is that he is so deeply committed to our success that he is just as pleased to see our work succeed as he is to see his own work succeed.” I hope that I have lived up to that high accolade.

I do not enjoy summer, because my colleagues and our students are not around much. No hanging out in the office talking about everything from books, politics, philosophy, culture, teaching and maybe a little gossip. I find it hard to come to grips with what a full year would be as an extended summer. I can only read and write so many hours a day, especially if I can’t see it manifest itself in the classroom. I’ve been at this long enough to know that no matter your stature, when you are gone, your shelf life is short. In four years, or three, in many cases today, you are just a name that the ever-cycling group of current students may or may not have heard about, but in any case, you aren’t impacting them directly.

Everything about this academic life hasn’t been idyllic. Pay may have been less than ideal, frustrations exist, challenges are around every corner and today the very existence of my discipline, type of institution and indeed the liberal arts are under threat from forces internal and external.

I know that someday my portion of the quest will come to an end. Health is precarious, the mind fragile, life full of the unsuspected. I’ve witnessed that from 50-plus years of colleagues. I know my vulnerabilities—back surgeries, hearing and creeping infirmities. Things can change in the blink of an eye. But as long as mind and body cooperate, I remain a teacher, the highest calling with which we mortals are graced. It is my slice of heaven, and, as for my students and my sacred department office space, I do not want to give up either prematurely.