15 Years of Teaching Comes to a Close (for now, at least)
Here's a LinkedIn update I recently posted. Remember, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and subscribe to this blog:
Well, it’s a wrap. I taught my last law school class today—and maybe forever. My last day at LMU Duncan School of Law as an administrator and associate professor is May 31. But most of that time between now and then will likely be filled with grading, meetings, and administrative responsibilities. As of today, though, my teaching career has come to a close after 15 years.
You see, for the past five years, I’ve lived in Ohio. But LMU Law is in Tennessee. So almost every week for five years (minus the semesters when classes were entirely online because of COVID), I made the four-and-a-half-hour commute each way between Dayton and Knoxville. Last year, I decided to give notice that this academic year (my tenth year teaching at LMU Law during an eleven-year span) would be my last. It was time for me to spend more time with my family and to be closer to my aging parents. And for someone who always preached work-life balance to my students, I knew this was the right decision a year ago. And I still do today.
Yet, I knew walking into the classroom this afternoon for the very last time as “Dean Tommy” would be difficult. And it was.
The reason I entered legal education more than 15 years ago was to help law students in a way I wished I would have been helped when I was a law student myself. Yes, I wanted to be their teacher. But I also wanted to be their coach, their cheerleader, their advocate, their sounding sound, their counterarguments to any bad decision they might have considered, their future colleague in the legal profession, and, ultimately, their friend.
Needless to say, emotions overcame me during today’s class. I shed more than a few tears and found myself unable to speak at times.
Indeed, the magnitude of teaching my last class hit me tremendously. The joy of my job has always been the teaching and working with students as they make the transition to law school, progress through their legal studies, and prepare for the bar exam.
To all my students—past and present—thank you for allowing me to be a small part of your legal education. Thank you for trusting me to be your teacher. I did not take that responsibility lightly. And, of course, thank you for laughing (sometimes groaning) at my dad jokes!
Continue to kick butt! I’ll be watching your successes from Ohio!