How Many Last Times?

 I returned my last stash of university owned technology to the office today.  Of course it was no longer my office, hadn’t been for several months now. First retirement, then Covid closed that door, then opened it again for “moving out."  But as I drove away I wondered how many more times I would leave campus for the "last time?" It seems to have changed rather dramatically every time I have ventured here over the last several months. But peeking through the new buildings and the wandering new students I caught glimpses of the campus I had first glimpsed in the fall of 1981. What is that 30 years ago? Another indication of my lack of facility with math.  My calculator says 39 years. Yikes!  It shouldn’t be that easy to lose a decade, but it is what it is.

I realize that things are rather different these days. People rarely stay in one job for more than a decade. And considering the changes the Covid-19 pandemic may usher in, when one changes jobs in the future the major difference you may encounter could simply be a new login screen on the computer in your home office.

My experience has been radically different.  While “my office” has bounced around among, let’s see, three buildings that I recall, and at least 6 actual different rooms, they were all in buildings spread along about a mile of Hillsborough Street. So as I parked my car, moped or bike - again depending on the decade - I walked a similar route to my office or classroom. Colleagues proved more fluid. None officially remain from the 12? 18? I encountered at my first faculty meeting, although a couple still touch administrative and adjunct roles. Dear friends, mild antagonists, valued colleagues, racquetball buddies, all now distant in time or space.  Strange blend of smiles and melancholy. More disconcerting is the fact that several of my most recent colleagues had not yet been born when I lwas first welcomed as the “new kid” in the department.

I haven’t walked around campus much over the last 8 or 9 years, as - in an unintentional rehearsal for this past year - I have been teaching my classes online.  But I do remember a couple of strange strolls. I wandered out the back of my building and headed off to where the design school, the parking lot and the gym should have been. I did encounter sites that conjured up places and faces, smiles and memories of hazy days gone by. But I also found other spots occupied by large buildings and strange paths that had no business blocking my way. Quite the opposite of “deja vue”  more like “deja who?”

So as I walked down the hallway of Winston Hall today, for yet another “last time,” I was somewhat conflicted to see two of my paintings hanging, as they have for the last five or six years, on the wall at the end of the hall. They are small versions of two of my images that graced the sides of city buses in the city’s Art on the Move project a few years ago. I like them and have always drawn some what, comfort? pleasure? from them as I walked past on my way to my office, or class. But now I wonder what they might mean to students and colleagues from this, my maybe “last day” onward?

”Strange, but nice colors?”

”Who is RL Schrag?”

”I think he taught here?”

”Really?”

”Yeah. A long time ago.”