Changes for 2015

I'm having a big job change for 2015.  It won't really start until February.  In fact, my plan is that my birthday celebration will also be a celebration (at least for me and the household who has had to live with me) of my big job change. 

For the last 3.5 years I have been doing a job that I felt was necessary and that I was well qualified for.  It needed to be done and I was the person that was a good fit to do it.  I was full-time running multiple federal grants.  The amount of money per year was around $2M.  Doesn't spending that kind of money on improving the institution and providing improved opportunities for students sound fun?  Well, in some sense it was fun.  But in the sense that I was no longer teaching, it wasn't.  So now I am going back into the classroom full time and the college is hiring someone to replace me and making the position a regular part of the administrative org chart.  Yay!!! (When it was me doing the job it wasn't a "regular administrative" position since I was still considered faculty.)

So this month I am leaving a job for the first time since I left my waitress job in Spokane to be in school full time for my masters. (Does that even really count--there was nothing left undone, I just said goodbye and left!) Technically, I left teaching to do this grant work full time.  But in that transition the semester had ended so the classes were over and many of the other things that I did carried along.  For example, I worked on some of the same committees and participated in many of the same campus activities.  This time the shift will be more significant.  I have many ongoing projects that I will be leaving for someone else to continue.  Of course, anyone who leaves a career-type job does this!  But to me it is very foreign!  I have also made a commitment to myself to step away from the grant work for at least a year.  There are opportunities as faculty to participate, but for myself and for the new person coming in, I think it is best if I don't.  At least for awhile. 

This is a very odd feeling!  I am so thrilled to be stepping away.  And at the same time, those steps are very difficult to take.  I'm walking away from something that I spent a lot of time and energy (and sleepless nights) on.  I don't want it anymore, but I want the transition to a new owner to be smooth!  I have  never done this before in my entire career.  It's funny--new experiences get more rare the older you get.  I am comforted by the fact that people do this every day, so I know it is possible.  Also by the fact that I am participating in hiring my "replacement plus."

A month from now I will know how it went!