Getting older, getting better -- very slowly

When I finished my undergraduate degree in May 1973, did I have any inkling whatsoever as to where I would be, what I'd be doing and how life would be in Harrison, Wisconsin in summer 2021? Maybe a little.

Before reaffirming my general to high level of content with how things 'turned out' over these past fifty years, let me look for some sources of joy from the journey, not just the outcome of fifty years in higher education.

I doubt I'd have thought a PhD was likely although by May 1973 I had committed to two more years at Binghamton, with a teaching assistantship while earning an MBA. At the time, I was deflecting employment. I had a firm offer from Nalco for $800 a month as a salesman and while it was not the worst possible prospect for a recent graduate, including me, extending my stay in the not real world of higher education seemed much better. I knew my way around very well. They were paying me and providing a free and more practical degree than my cobbled together Administrative Science degree, or so I thought. So why leave?

There were no social ties, no girlfriend, no geographic designs, no grand plan driving me elsewhere. It was one of many 'paths of least resistance' I chose through much of my life, basically a satisfactory likely outcome with minimum cost or risk to the pursuit.

Two years later the story was somewhat the same. Without ever realizing it, I had found another 'least resistance' path, namely a PhD program. While I briefly entertained applying to UCLA, a quick acceptance and research assistant offer paved that path to Penn State pretty quickly. It also had sentimental value and -- at least I believed this to be true -- State Park would provide me the traditional college experience Binghamton never could, and State also provided a much larger number of eligible females, something not to be discounted. And similar and different in the sense that I was older and more disappointed at the prospect of entering the real world.

By 1978 and the end of my accelerated degree pursuit at Penn State -- I had postponed financial independence and potential improvement in standard of living for nine years by that time -- Kansas also presented an unlikely but agreeable and also least resistant path forward.

1978-86. While I earned what seemed like an astounding $18,000 nine-moth salary (plus another 11% summer grant for new faculty), the cost of real adulting hit pretty hard. While I jumped from making $4,800 a year, now I wanted to buy a house, own a car, be able to take a vacation. I borrowed the ten percent down payment from Paige and Ed on my $36,000 home on Montana Street, with a 10.8725% thirty-year mortgage (with P&I about $365 a month). The new, $7800 Honda Accord I bought just before I left State College, to be replaced a year later with a 'cool' limited edition Mazda RX-7 costing $12,500, or about 80% of my annual take-home pay.

I enjoyed Kansas at the same time boredom became a real problem. I was not a self-starter on my research and it did not help that Kansas did not provide the research facilities nor the computer programming language (APL) that were the linchpins to my dissertation and future research plans. I grew quickly distracted by very good looking and even more eligible women, expanding my potential age range to 18 to 35 years old.

By 1985 I knew that life in Lawrence was becoming a bit confining for a single male. As much out of frustration (with my social prospects, my financial situation and prospects and repeated failed attempts at meaningful relationships) as inspiration I applied for jobs, including the Marquette department chair.

1987-1990. I still had no real idea where I was going, what I really wanted to do, or why I wanted to do the things that I did do. Marquette and growing older brought the idea of "what do I want out of life" question to a head. Meeting Dena was the real life-changing event. after marriage in 1990, the next thirty years caused my entire life focus to shift from 'me' to 'we,' and then to expand the two-person 'we' to four people. At the age of forty I came as close as I ever had been to 'hitting my stride.'

1990-2006. The past thirty years fully engaged me with rising and providing for a family, with advancing my career, and with effectively being able to 'retire' from that rapid advancement in career (form 1990 to 2000), to decide in 2000 to retire from my second dean's job in 2001. The following 18 years were basically involved in more least resistance paths as not only a tenured professor but, at least for some time, a candidate for eve greater things, like a bigger deanship, a vice president, or even a presidency. Those career prospects had basically extinguished by 2006.

2006-2019. More than ever on cruise control, paths of least resistance. Watching Jane and Gaby grow and truly blossom, and keeping the love fire alive with Dena, those were enough for me. And it was also a time of serious attention to preparing for first, paying for college for Jane and Gaby, and, second, retirement for me.

And probably about this time did I really begin to experience the shift from middle age to late middle age to entering the life of the elderly. True, I seem to fool people into thinking I am younger than I am; my three women help with that error in age estimation by others, who can't fathom a man nearing 70 to have a daughter just firing college.

The last twelve months of the pandemic have really slowed my down. I am constantly grazing, using comfort food as just that, comfort, in a time of chaos and uncertainty in the country. I walk a hundred miles a month but I ache and creak in my joints, especially in my back and a bit in my hips. The three things I thought I'd 'fix' when I stepped down as dean twenty years ago -- teeth, tummy and toes -- are worse than ever, despite some short periods of improvement in this past twenty years. I excuse myself of these shortcomings. I had a good run, of almost seventy years. I have to expect to not be able to look, feel and act they way I did when I crossed that stage in Binghamton in May 1973.

There still is much joy in life after 65. And I haven't even mentioned some of those key elements, like the revitalizing humor of Fr Carl, the years of running all over the world, the real accomplishments in terms of teaching, research and administration, and the direct, meaningful impact I feel certain that I had on thousands of my college students and dozens of colleagues.

Tomorrow we are off for four days in Los Angeles, Gaby's formal graduation ceremony, family time for the four of us, remembering the past and thinking about the future.