After much reflection, some deep breaths, and so much prayer, I’ve made the decision to leave my job.

I have been working at Columbia College for almost 11 years, and in higher education roles for just over 20 years.

This wasn’t an easy decision. I’ve grown here—professionally and personally. I’ve built strong relationships, worked on projects that challenged me, and felt incredibly proud of what my team and I accomplished together. In many ways, this place has become a second home. My kids have only known me in this job, and have grown up coming to campus events. But sometimes, even when you were really good at something and there is comfort there, you realize it’s time to grow in a different direction.

This is bittersweet, but it has been a very intentional and drawn out decision for me. I don’t think we talk about these things enough, so here I am sharing some of my decision making moments. Some of it is selfish for me to process what led to now, but I also hope that it resonates with others who are contemplating their next step.

So let’s go back a little bit.

I have been able to build my career based around student success. I started my higher ed experience working in Residence Life, then moved to Accessibility Services, and then landed a role at my current institution in a Student Affairs adjacent role in Student Success and retention efforts. I started here as a Student Success Advisor, and then continued working my way up in leadership positions. I am really proud of being able to say that I am the Senior Director of Advising, Retention, and Student Success, and the fact that I have Registrar on my list of career accomplishments is cool too. If I would have told my younger self where I ended up, I would not have believed it. I never imagined this path, but it has been a blessing to be able to grow into. However, the last few years have been challenging to say the least with the opportunities that were in front of me. I was part of leading two different office merges, took supervision of a team where my knowledge was limited, navigated institutional layoffs, persisted through college leadership changes, and just generally existed in the craziness that is the higher ed landscape right now. I felt good about my place here and felt like each change was an opportunity to influence the student experience in new ways. I felt like climbing the “ladder” in my positions would equip me to affect change at new heights and at a greater scale.

After Tom’s health declined last summer, it really made me stop in my tracks to think about what I was really after with my career. Where was I dedicating my time? I saw life differently then, and I started to feel a quiet nudge. At first it was just a whisper: a sense that maybe there was something more I needed to explore, something different I needed to learn, or a new challenge I needed to face. As time went on, that whisper grew louder. And eventually, I knew I had to listen.

I realized I was chasing a career ladder, and I wasn’t getting it.

I started asking myself what would the next leadership ACTUALLY mean for me and did it really align with my values and passions. And why was I actually feeling so compelled to have that recognition when that has never been important to me? I was extremely conflicted on why that next promotion meant so much. I started looking around me and the spaces I was in questioning the work I was doing. To be clear, the work I was doing was valuable and important, I just didn’t feel clear on where I stood in the mix of it. It was a rollercoaster of emotions of being grateful for my job and the doors that were opened for me, but also feeling like I wasn’t in the right place anymore.

As I was teaching my first year seminar this fall, I realized I was really missing the mark on why I joined higher education. I have always taught one class to keep me in touch with the student voice. Staying connected to students was important to me as I moved up in roles that took me away from the front lines. I had accepted each leadership position ultimately because I felt that each new step offered new opportunities to help the student experience through my expertise and leadership, and I truly felt called to collaborate at a higher level on student focused initiatives. However, I was really losing why I got into it in the first place. It wasn’t about titles or being in leadership.

I wanted to be in front of students.

I remember when I was a kid, I made my brother play school all the time. I had a dream of being a teacher for as long as I can remember. I ended up getting my degree in Social Studies Education. However, as I was doing my observations in college, I knew I wasn’t ready at that point to be in a classroom. The reasons are complicated and a story for another day, but honestly part of me was scared to take that step. I was really thriving in my own college experience, and so I never left that comfort and have been working on a college campus for the last 20 years focusing on student learning in a different way.

I will never regret the steps that I took along the way. I have loved the roles I have had at several institutions. I have met some amazing individuals (students and colleagues, and sometimes students turned colleagues). I have been able to travel across the country to live and visit. It gave me my degrees debt free. I was able to learn the art of ordering pizzas and how to analyze data for student success. I learned how to strategize initiatives, how to stand-up different technology platforms, about leadership development, and ultimately a lot about showing up as a human being in different spaces and how to advocate for students.

This decision was complex because I have been here a long time, and higher education is the only professional job I have known. Leaving a job isn’t just about leaving tasks or titles, while there are some projects I wish I could see play out. It’s about leaving people—coworkers who’ve become collaborators, mentors who’ve become friends, and a rhythm that’s become familiar.

But when I stripped it down, this job was no longer serving me how I needed. It is not that I didn’t like my job or that I didn’t agree with the vision of where the college was going. That was why it was so hard to make this decision because I am really excited where CC is headed and there are some really amazing people working really hard to make higher ed accessible and successful for students. I just came to grips with the fact that it wasn’t for ME anymore. I wasn’t connecting to myself, and the leadership wasn’t fulfilling me in the way I had hoped, and I was just feeling bogged down by the weight of it all. Change management and leadership is really hard, and I just wasn’t confident that I had it in me to keep driving that bus. It is hard to keep going when your heart is telling you to go in a different direction. And if your heart isn’t into it, even if you do believe in the work, the decision to stay is complicated. So I leaned into that whisper that it was time to circle back to the classroom. I didn’t want to run from the dream I had as a kid anymore.

Next fall I am going to be teaching 8th grade Social Studies, and I get giddy every time I think about this next experience. I’m stepping into the unknown, and while that’s scary, it’s also full of possibility. What I do have is a deep sense of gratitude and a willingness to keep learning, keep growing, and keep building something meaningful—wherever that may be. I also know there is a different confidence in me that was not there when I was 22 graduating with my education degree. While I am realizing teaching was the plan the whole time, so was my higher ed path. This “detour” in higher ed was an important step to becoming the teacher I always wanted to be. The last two decades have shown me so much that I can infuse into my curriculum in the middle school level. I cannot be more excited to create magic in middle school.

As Tom’s situation last year highlighted for me, I only get to do this life once. And I am feeling called to impact education differently. I am sad to leave people and projects I have been working so closely on. So while I do have moments of immense guilt, I know this is were God is calling me to be. And at the end of the day, I had to make the decision for myself.

I would also be remiss to not acknowledge what this change means for my family balance and how that played into the decision. Switching to the K-12 system is giving me a new ability to be on my kid’s schedule. To be on the same breaks without worrying that I am missing important meetings or having to take PTO is really a gift. To be able to get time back with them is invaluable. I had been giving so much of myself away to my job over the last few years; it has been really hard to also be a mom and wife. I am not naive to think that being a teacher is not going to take a lot of mental energy, but this is allowing me to have a break and put in new boundaries that focus on mine and my family’s needs. There is something to be said about letting go of my current job so I can shed some of the expectations I had for myself to do all the things. I have the ability to start over fresh with a new lens.

To everyone I’ve worked with: thank you. Thank you for the trust, the partnership, the patience, and the joy. I am so proud of the big and little moments over the years. Thank you for being a part of this chapter in my story. It has been a good one.

And to those who are reading this and maybe feeling their own nudge to make a change—listen to it. It’s okay to outgrow something, even something you love. Growth isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just a quiet, persistent whisper that says, you’re ready.

Here’s to new beginnings and remembering your why.