My Fifth Career....And What It is Not

As one of the very first baby boomer children (38 days into the era to be exact), I've always been among the first to experience all those boomerish events. One boomerism that is even more true for the children of boomers is having many careers over the course of one's working life. I'm into my fifth. (Not the one you think, I'll open that fifth at dinner.)

Career #1 was teaching in Des Plaines. Incredibly naive, I thought I knew everything about teaching, but fell on my face over and over again in the classroom. I did receive incredible mentoring, developed life-long friendships, began presenting at conferences, and began my writing career.

Career #2 doesn't fit neatly into a time frame but began way back in 1968 when my mentor asked me to contribute my classroom applications to the theory she was writing about on teaching Spanish phonics to children. That led to further collaboration with her, then to solo writing ventures. That came to a halt when Career #3 began, but has been resurrected during Career's #4 and #5. And, miraculously, the royalty checks keep on coming!

Career #3 was my most important career...that of full-time mom. Besides having the privilege of being the one with my babies and preschoolers all day, this job came with other sub-careers such as den mother, church president, PTA health and safety chair, Sunday school teacher, and Kindergarten story teller. For better or worse, those years shaped my children and taught me the most.

Career #4 came unexpectedly when Kevin was in first grade. We both started school full time that year....he with a wonderful teacher and me with an incredibly difficult groups of 7th and 8th graders. By the grace of my kind principal, I returned the following year to much nicer students and by the end of career #4 had developed a few more lifelong friends, had greatly expanded the conference giving gigs, and, contrary to what I thought I knew at the beginning of career #1, left career #4 realizing there was still a lot to learn about learning!

Now I'm three years into Career #5 and I'm still trying to figure out what it is. I know what it is not. It's certainly not playing golf or going to the Senior Center. After spending this afternoon planting bulbs and unsuccessfully trying to dig up and separate irises, I know it's not gardening. Unfortunately for Ken, it's not being a gourmet chef....or even a moderately good cook. It's not - perish the thought - substitute teaching.

What it is is a lot of neat surprises.

This sounds like I'm writing an autobiography. That really wasn't my intention, but traveling to Wisconsin this morning for breakfast (something I sure couldn't do in Careers 1-4!) just got me thinking about the inter-twining of all the life experiences.

I met "H" in Kenosha for breakfast. I first met her when I attended a BER seminar she gave back in the early 90's. Later on, she did some consulting in my school district and we became friends. She went on to do foreign language consulting all over the world, wrote the major methods text on the market, and we ran into each other once every few years at a conference. Recently we re-connected - where else? - online. Now I'm the BER presenter and she's likely to mentor me some more. What fun it was to chat this morning with someone who shares my passion for working with foreign language teachers and what fun to see how life experiences intertwine when you least expect it.

My sons both seem to have an incredible grasp on what they want to do with their lives and both are doing all the necessary things to make those goals happen. They both know how important it is to make contacts with people in their fields and to pursue every opportunity, no matter how minor it may seem at the beginning. I hope they will have as much fun with careers #2,3,4,5.....as I have and will someday in the distant future have many "breakfasts in Wisconsin" with people who helped them along the way!