Today I realized that I have almost been retired as long as I had been employed. How time flies when you’re getting old (older).
This morning was spent recalling incidents while teaching at the University of Northern Iowa where I was employed from 1969 until taking early retirement in the year 2000. Some memories stand out as positive moments and others as less than productive circumstances. It is the purpose in this document to illustrate to the younger and less experienced leaders in the field of education just how to keep ones focus while dealing with the everyday problems which unfortunately come with the job.
Example 1.
“What not to say to the president and the members of the Board of Regence of your university”.
The president of our university requested that our School of Music provide musical entertainment for a formal dinner for the Iowa Board of Regency, to be hosted on the 50 yard line on the floor of our new indoor football stadium, the UNI Dome.
My department head at the time suggested that my student Dixieland band would be perfect for that evening’s entertainment, and of course I agreed.
That evening found the Iowa Board of Regents seated at several tables located in the middle of the massive UNI football stadium; all downed in formal wear and served by our smartly dressed food staff.
During the meal, this most impressive gathering on the 50-yard line whose responsibility was to allocate budgeted monies to all the Iowa Universities, the UNI Bearcats Dixieland band played on.
Later that evening the president of our university introduced me to the president and several members of the Iowa Board of Regents. During the conversation our president mentioned that in addition to being on the faculty at UNI, I was also an accomplished wild life artist who was recently accepted into the Leigh Yacky Woodson Bird of Art Museum in Warsaw, Wisconsin, and listed as one of the “leading bird artists of the Western world”.
The information above is entirely correct, but what followed is the real lesson on what not to say in a similar situation.
The President of the Iowa Board of Regent extended his hand to congratulate me for my recent acceptance into the museum to which I responded, “I had to do something to make a living”.
The next two weeks I checked my mail to see if I should be looking for new employment………..
Hopefully he had a sense of humor!
I never found out.
He left, I stayed.