While teaching at a BDO National Conference the week of December 7th, I got an email from a colleague I'd stayed in touch with at Davenport University. He was my mentor while I did a stint at adjunct teaching and we'd remained in contact for recruiting over the last four years. Every year he'd ask if I'd be open to taking on a class and every year I was just too busy with BDO and family that the thought of teaching one class was overwhelming. This year I jokingly replied No but let me know if you ever have that full-time position open again. When I got an immediate response of We do - would you really consider? I didn't even know what to say. We had a brief phone call while I was traveling and I agreed to schedule a coffee the following week when I returned. Just to catch up.
Tuesday the 15th I swung into Davenport for what ended up being an hour of them selling me on all the reasons I should make the switch from public to academics. Summers off! Fridays off! Spring Break off! Christmas Break off! Oh, and the satisfaction that I'd be molding young minds in all things accounting. I guess they actually do a little bit of work.
We ended the meeting with me still on the fence but an agreement that I should meet with the new Dean of the business school. Friday the 18th, the morning after the BDO Holiday party, at 8:00am, I sat down with the Dean and three other faculty and was peppered with questions on why I would be a good fit at DU before they opened up the door for me to really ask what I would be getting myself into. I left that meeting almost 100% confident this would be my next journey.
Christmas was fast approaching as was the BDO year-end closure. The day before our office closed for nearly 10 days, I walked into my boss' office to tell him I was leaving a place I had come to love so dearly. After that it was a whirlwind of face to face conversations with several other partners and co-workers as well as phone calls to those who'd already scattered for the holiday break. Classes at DU would be starting on January 11th which only gave me five days in the office after break to square things up. Thankfully DU agreed to share me with BDO two days a week until the end of January to finish up some rather large projects and give me time to appropriately tell my clients - some who I'd serviced for my entire career - that I would be leaving BDO. And I only cried twice.
I had a love-hate relationship with BDO (as I imagine most people are with their job) but never in a million years did I think I would leave. A very small piece of me still wakes up every day wondering what on Earth I got myself into. But that feeling seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the days keep passing and I'm not getting a hundred emails all hours of the day or getting phone calls from clients on holidays. Davenport didn't issue me a laptop so when I leave work - I LEAVE WORK. If I bring stuff home on the weekends to read and don't get to it, I don't feel stressed to the max on Monday because I didn't get through something. Other than my scheduled class times I set my own schedule. If I want to have breakfast with Lily and come in at noon - no one cares.
It's been a month and a half and outside my actual scheduled classes, I've been working at a DU sponsored tax prep site for low income households, I've gotten the opportunity to present at an Association for Human Resource Management luncheon, I've already been scheduled to teach an eight hour continuing education course to a corporate group, I've interviewed a textbook publisher, and will participate in the upcoming commencement ceremony in April. I've been assured that the possibilities are endless - I just have to ask.
So why? Looking back on the extremely quick - and perhaps rash - decision, the answer is in front of me every single day. Perhaps when I had my last ranting post, the decision was made before the opportunity had presented itself.
I blinked. And this little one
has transformed into this not so little one.
And the next time I blink, Lily will be walking across the stage at her very own commencement ceremony - obviously as a Panther.
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