This is what counts.

Tomorrow is my last day of work as an Athletic Academic Counselor, and I do feel that I gave the position a pretty good run. 3.5 years. 7 semesters. 250 nights of study hall. 200 students I directly worked with in some fashion. That's a pretty serious inventory, estimations of course, but pretty serious nonetheless.

The funny thing about this chapter of my life coming to a close is that the numbers don't really mean much. It doesn't mean much that I often worked 55-hour weeks. It doesn't mean much that I created multiple spreadsheets to be an organized freak. It doesn't mean much that I created 25 lesson plans for a course to teach. These "countables" aren't what matters or what I take away from this experience.

What I've come to appreciate is that there ARE students, a pretty special group, that really have meant a lot to my life, and I do think they would say the same about me. A good deal of them took time in the past few weeks to spend time with me and actually talk to me about my life and my future and my next step. It's usually the other way around, so it was nice to see this reciprocity. That means something. It means there was a give-and-take in the relationship for both sides, mutually beneficial in a variety of ways.

Work in education is often thankless. There's not a great deal of understanding or appreciation from the larger world of the energy educators invest in other people. Educators don't go to work on a daily basis so people can say to them "Hey, I appreciate you" or "Thanks so much for what you did." But in the small instances when you do hear those words or read those words, the feeling is absolutely enjoyable. It's hard not to feel good.

One of the teams I work with has really treated me as one of their own over the past few years, appreciating me for who I am and allowing me to be an integral role in their program. The fact is I didn't always feel that what I did was integral; rather, I always felt that I was just trying to do for them what I would have wanted someone to do for me. Basically, I just tried to care about who they were as individuals and who they were trying to be as a collective. I just tried to be understanding and supportive in any way I could, and I was blessed to have that same understanding and support from them. It means a lot to me to have received the following written words: our program "is better for the time you spent with us."

That's truly remarkable to me, to have someone think this highly of the energy I invested, the time I spent, and the effort I gave. This is what will live on with me when I think back on this experience and this chapter of my life. This is what matters. This is what counts.