Always about the People

When we leave one job for another, the new work calls to us as loudly and clearly—hopefully—as the old work once beckoned. Any sadness we feel often centers on the people we leave behind: the customers, the clients, the coworkers.  

Five years ago, when I left a full-time teaching job at the two-year campus of the University of Wisconsin-Marinette to take a full-time administrator role at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, I definitely felt called to the new work. Sure, I would miss my familiar office with the pretty view through the tall, narrow window, and the often-walked hallways and classrooms. I would even reflexively check what was no longer my mailbox for a couple of years every time I came back to the campus for a visit. However, I realized quickly that what made me sad wasn’t the loss of the place or the work, but the people.  

In the years since, I’ve come to know more conclusively that there was nothing special about the spaces. They are like other college classrooms everywhere. Some had great technology, while others needed a refresh. Some classrooms had wonky layouts and others were conducive to the kinds of student interactions that foster deep learning. Our campus had a theater, science labs, a cafeteria, a gymnasium—typical college campus spaces. Like other workplaces, offices, rooms, and buildings are often interchangeable.  

It was the people who brought festivity to these spaces. They transformed the cafeteria for fantastic Chinese New Year celebrations, awards ceremonies, and Phi Theta Kappa inductions. They made the gymnasium roar to life during hotly contested playoff games. They made the theater feel even more important for everything from orientation through graduation. They added decorations and gifts to make classrooms feel like homes for staff milestone celebrations, including for my husband and me for our first baby shower.  

It was the people who brought compassion to these spaces. We extended boxes of tissues to students facing life challenges, colleagues too. We decorated our offices, added art to the classrooms, developed, decorated, and painted a PRIDE Center, and festooned the cafeteria with flags from the dozens of countries of our international students to help all students feel like they belonged.  

It was the people who brought learning, argument, and disagreement to these spaces. As staff, we taught each other in discussions about books on teaching or during hallway and office conversations. We disagreed in committee meetings, finding our way to compromise by focusing on students.  

The faculty and staff brought life to the classrooms by motivating, inspiring, cajoling, and nagging students to join us in learning moments. The students brought life to the classrooms with insights, questions, challenges, experiences, and concerns. We learned from each other, grew closer together, and said goodbyes at bittersweet graduations. We all learned names, forgot names, remembered faces, and never forgot certain classroom moments.  

In my office during my first year at UW-Marinette (2000)

It was the people who brought the community in, ensuring that they saw how amazing our students (their neighbors) are. And the community came! For theater and music performances, for academic conferences, for festivals, for hosted events, and for fundraisers.  

When I left, carrying the last items out of my office and walking down an empty hallway, I thought I might miss the spaces, the commute, my office, the work. I knew I would miss the people.  

I found other people, other coworkers who bring life to different spaces. These coworkers and I bring festivity, compassion, learning, motivation, and community to our workspaces. These people serve our communities in the same way. I met new students too, fewer now because I am not in a classroom, but still, many amazing stories of persistence, strength, brilliance, and ingenuity grace my work life. 

My former workplace is experiencing a significant transition right now. Each of those former coworkers is experiencing their own unique form of grief. All of us who worked there are no strangers to grief in our work lives. Over the last five years or so, we had to mourn the deaths of several colleagues and former colleagues who died far too young and, in some instances, too quickly for goodbyes. Katie. John. Tonya. Jennifer. While we worked together, we experienced numerous budget challenges that forced us to say goodbye to colleagues whose jobs were eliminated. Some coworkers retired or left, like I did, to take other jobs. We weathered a lot of grieving moments together. And now they are weathering a new grieving moment, and I am no longer their colleague.  

I’ve noticed lately that we don’t speak publicly much about grieving losses at work. When we switch jobs, we post on social media about our new opportunities and maybe we say that we’ll miss old colleagues or we’re sad to leave, but then we pivot. We’re supposed to do so quickly. We’re supposed to be excited about change.  

I wonder what it would be like if we supported each other through this transition in a different way. What would it be like if our responses were more multifaceted? What if instead of just congratulations, we replied with words of support for the challenges that transitions bring? What if as new employers we did a better job of acknowledging that with excitement can come worry about difference or nostalgia over what came before?  

I know I would be a better leader if I made more space for conversation with employees about past workplaces and any grief they had—colleagues they missed, former bosses who were or were not what they needed. I would be a better leader if I spoke with employees more about all forms of work grief, mourning what they missed and mourning what they never had.   

As my former colleagues grieve the transition they are experiencing, I too feel a sense of loss. I am nostalgic. I notice I gloss over in my mind the hardships, challenges, and people who annoyed me. I hope they also gloss over how I annoyed them. Because after all, it was always about the people. They made that workplace thrive.  

My former colleagues decided to have one last potluck—and they invited back anyone and everyone they could on short notice. (As much as it was always about the people, it was also a little bit about great food.) I want to come together to celebrate these people.  

The person I was when I started teaching there in my first full-time professional job has evolved quite a bit. Those former colleagues and every student who made those spaces special helped me become the person I am today. So I will allow myself to experience three simultaneous states: to joyfully celebrate the lives who made the spaces special, to grieve change and loss, and to anticipate a future full of opportunities for all of us.