Moving on…-

[M]

Please delete if not allowed...

I've been moved on for a little while now (my wife no longer works for VU, we are at ND now). Anyways, been going throw some things and it's time to get rid of some of the VU I've collected through the years.

I've got some Homer Bobbleheads, a couple Crusader Bobbleheads, and so far 1 Victory Bell (there's another around here someplace). Also have a signed Homer/Bryce South Shore poster and an Alan Harre South Shore poster. Also have pieces of the old gym floor around here somewhere.

I probably won't be checking here very much so maybe best to send a DM, I think I get an email when that happens, if you're interested in any of it and we can try to make a deal.

Hank

[ValpoDiaspora]

Hi there,

Just wanted to note I'm moving on from the Board! It's 9 months since I moved physically away from Valpo.... so it seems like the right time, as that's the time it takes to gestate a new life!

Thanks so much to all of you... I've learned a lot from you all, and am grateful for the way this board distilled and made more intelligible the different competing interests and perspectives at the university. The various diagnoses and prescriptions offered by you all here have been incredibly illuminating to digest, whether I agreed with them or not. Although it is a kind of grim conversation to analyze the particular mix of strengths and disfunctions that grip the university so much, it really has helped with a sort of closure to better understand 'what happened' in the complexity of all the pressures and narratives within and upon the university, both about how it got to this place and how it might move forward. When I was there (2019-2022), everything was SO intense for both institutional and stage-of-life reasons (new faculty buried in course preps, COVID pandemic, new baby born, layoff, restoration, more unstability, debates over liberal arts and sciences vs professional schools, senior colleagues leaving, campus worry over the sports teams, regret over having asked my spouse to give up his career so I could take the job at Valpo, only for us to now leave, etc) that it was hard to make sense of anything, or even to gauge whether there was any sense to make at all! I remember just feeling kind of shell-shocked as we packed the moving van this past June. The world seemed a nonsensical mix of grief and sunshine, as I gave back the key to the office where I had spent so many late nights grading and prepping for class, and loaded my Valpo-born baby chattering and laughing into her carseat in the back with the rest of the family, and we all waved goodbye to campus and then to our house. So I've really appreciated hearing and thinking with you thru all the ponderings of these recent conversations, as it's been tremendously clarifying with a little distance.

I know that, thanks to what is good about Valpo, I am a much better teacher now at my new university than I would have been in some alternative universe version of life where I never taught at Valpo and just went straight from my doctorate into my current job.

grateful to you all!

best wishes, Beacons!

[David81]

Thank you, Diaspora, for your informative, insightful, and heartfelt contributions to our conversations! You have added soooo much to these exchanges and to our understanding of the faculty experience at VU, during a very challenging time for this university.

I hope that your participation has been helpful and even therapeutic to you in processing the personal and professional tumult of starting your teaching career at the time and place that you did, and a reminder of the strength and heart quality that brought you through it. May the path ahead be rich (spiritually and salary-wise 😜), gratifying, and healthy for you and your family. 😊😊😊😊