Open All the Doors and Let You Out Into the World

It's the happiest, saddest time of the year.

It's graduation season.

The past few weeks, as they always are at this time of year, have been a daily cycle of wrap up meetings, transition meetings, banquet dinners, farewell lunches, award ceremonies, hugs, photos, and any number of other events leading to one thing: graduation.

Lights out.

Closing time.

It's the time of year when we say goodbye.

I work with students, and I love working with students.

I work with amazing student leaders, who have a mission and a vision and a cause, and effortlessly talk others into following them.

I work with students who are going to change the world someday, and students who are already changing it now.

I work with students who are passionate about making our campus a better place, or our city, or our state, or our country, or our world.

I work with students who are amazingly talented, students who are poets and dancers and actors and singers and musicians, artists and builders and makers and world shapers.

I work with students who work for change, and with students who work to preserve and honor tradition.

I work with students who are raising children that I would sit next to in a restaurant.

I work with students who are geniuses, students whose minds move at faster paces and higher levels than I can easily imagine.

I work with students who fight prejudice and inequity, students who strive to live and breathe social justice and positive empowerment, students who want to bring us together and raise us all up higher.

I work with students who will become teachers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, politicians, accountants, chefs, mothers, fathers, writers, photographers, reporters, physicists, soldiers, ambassadors, and any other job you can think of.

I work with students who teach me new things every day, and I hope that somewhere, in some way, I've taught them something, too, and that it was something worth knowing.

I work with students, and then I wave from the doorway of my office as we turn them out into the world.

Then I clean up my desk, straighten my office, and wait for next year.

When I will work with students again.