Lucky

When I was a masters student and decided to get my PhD, it was mostly because I had a lot of encouragement from my professors. Ultimately it was my own decision, but it was their encouragement that opened up the possibility in the first place, got me excited about it, and made me feel confident that I could do it.

Back then, the graduate student coordinator for our department was also a member of my thesis committee. He was quiet and unassuming, but in his quiet and unassuming way he made me believe that I was capable and that I could do good things if I chose to go this direction with my life.

One day near the end of my master's program, when I had already made the decision to go to Michigan, we passed in the hallway and he stopped and he said something that for some reason has seared itself into my memory. "I think you can do great things for our field," he told me, and then he paused like he wasn't quite finished before adding, "but maybe someday you'll decide that there's something more important than this that makes you happy, and that's okay too."

That meant more to me than any of the encouragement I had received from anyone. I took it to mean that, while a lot of people had a lot of expectations for me, the most important thing was to find the place where I felt like I could do good and where I could be happy, no matter what that place was.

Six years later I am back in the same department, but in a role that's quite different from what they imagined for me when I was a bright-eyed master's student headed off to five more years of graduate school, and a role that's quite different from what they imagined for me a year ago when I entered the department as a visiting professor feeling out my post-graduate position in the field of math education. I've abandoned a career in research, and I will probably not contribute great things to the broad field of mathematics education. Instead I will devote my time and energy to my classroom and to individual students, and I have never loved what I do more than I do now.

The thesis committee member who stopped me in the hall is now my department chair. Yesterday, two weeks into my new role as a professional-track teacher educator, he stuck his head in my office and asked, "Amy, do you continue to be happy?"

"Yes," I said. "I continue to be very happy." And I meant it.

"Good," he responded. "If that changes, let me know." And he meant it.

I know I got this job because my department believes that I can contribute something valuable to the work that they do. But sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky to end up in a place where the people who hired me believe that the most important thing is that I am happy doing that work.