I’m not sure I’ve ever had a career plan so much as a series of career suggestions.
At different points in my life, I’ve had four or five versions of what I thought I was going to do. Maybe more, depending on how generously we define the word “plan.” Some people map out their careers with five-year goals, networking strategies and color-coded spreadsheets. I seem to have taken the scenic route, with occasional detours, road construction and one or two moments where the GPS simply said, “Recalculating.”
Right now, teaching is the career plan.
And it’s a meaningful one. There are days when I can see the value in it clearly — when a student finally understands something, when a class discussion goes somewhere unexpected, when a young writer finds a sentence that actually says what they meant to say.
There are also days when the plan feels less noble and more like crowd control with standards attached.
But this week gave me a pretty powerful reminder of why teaching matters.
It was Teacher Appreciation Week, and each of us received an envelope with letters from former students who are now about to graduate from high school. Mine had five letters in it. Every one of them was good enough to bring tears.
One student wrote, “Even in high school, I’ve only had one teacher come close to showing me the compassion you showed me.”
That means the world to me.
It means the world because I know the lessons matter, but I also know the moments in between the lessons matter just as much. Maybe more. The conversations before class. The quiet check-ins. The times when a student is clearly having a bad day, and the most important thing I can do has nothing to do with the standard on the board.
Those are the moments when I feel like I’m working the hardest to make a difference in my students’ lives.
So yes, teaching is the current career plan. And on some days, that plan is exhausting. On some days, it is frustrating. On some days, it feels like the paperwork, meetings, grading and constant noise are doing their best to bury the reason I started doing this in the first place.
Then a letter like that shows up, and the reason climbs back out.
But if I’m being completely honest, if I could write full time, that would become the career plan immediately. I don’t think I’d need a committee meeting or a strategic transition document. If someone handed me the chance to make a living writing books, reflections, essays, bourbon posts and the occasional cranky observation about modern life, I’d probably clear my desk before the copier finished jamming.
Writing has always felt less like a job option and more like the thing I keep coming back to, no matter what else I’m doing. Teaching may be the career I’m in, but writing is the career that keeps tugging at me.
So maybe my real career plan is still being revised.
Maybe I’m a man in search of a long-term plan. Or maybe the long-term plan has been there all along, hiding underneath the practical choices, the bills, the responsibilities and the unexpected turns.
For now, I teach. I write. I keep showing up. I keep trying to do useful work. And every now and then, a former student reminds me that even when the plan feels uncertain, the work still matters.
