Facebook recently reminded me that I was "leaving teaching" 15 years ago, in 2009...ha! Between then and when I *actually* "left teaching" in 2021:

- I spent a year writing full-time, both a textbook and articles freelance, and I learned how much I am not cut out for the vagaries and commercial pressures inherent in the publishing industry
- Simultaneously, I became pregnant with my first child...and realized that "stability" was a work-relevant value I'd been naively overlooking my entire adulthood to date! (go figure)
- I eagerly scrambled BACK to teaching in 2010. EAGERLY. (& oh-so-thankful that my colleagues graciously overlooked that I'd been "leaving"...)
- I began raising the first child, had a second, led the design of a programmatic suite for undergrads called Purposeful Work, and started a career coaching side hustle - all *while teaching*

Only after all of that occurred - 12 whole years after my triumphant Facebook announcement (and, I might add, two "I'm leaving" parties...eek...) - did I actually "leave teaching."

This doesn't mean I was a flake or a fool or a liar.

I was design thinking my way to better.

So many of my coaching clients have circuitous pivot attempts just like mine - and feel so much shame over it. Our society is obsessed with "leaps" and "big jumps" and "going for it." Society is not so keen on going backward.

But sometimes making a U-turn is *exactly* what needs to happen when you use of design thinking to carefully construct a career and life. Some prototypes (such as my full-time foray into writing) lead us to say, "um, no thanks!" and to reconsider our values and needs in a grounded, data-centered way.

That's not flakiness. That's good sense and experimentation done right.

Thanks to my U-turn I'll never (ever!) question whether I "should have been a writer" in a full-time capacity, as I had since I was 10. Been there, done that, all set.

I also will never (ever!) question whether I left teaching too soon; the final 12 years were AMAZING and filled with incredible new student relationships that feed me to this day (just talked with three of those alumni in the past month!) and fulfilling, intentional bucket list teaching opportunities that gave me a sense of satiated completion when I finally did "walk away." (Written in quotes because who's to say 2028 or 2034 or 2040 Rebecca won't want to teach again in some capacity? It'd be total arrogance to presume the future.)

So, nope 2009 Rebecca, your final honors thesis panel was not at all about rat brains. There's no shame in that. All the better for it.