I enjoyed Spring Break, even though it was cut short by needing to make up a snow day yesterday. At lunch somebody mentioned there are only 45 more teaching days until the start of final exams. I definitely have mixed feelings about that. I will certainly miss spending time with my students every day in my classes and in the Math Lab. I enjoy working with many of the math teachers as well. But there are several reasons why I am anxious to finish:

• I am tired of the stress of teaching and being so busy 7 days per week for 10 months of the year;
• I am frustrated with the chaos swirling around the math department and do not want to be there as things get worse and worse for my poor students and teachers if I am unable to do much to help their situation;
• I am anxious to get working on several writing projects that I have put off far longer than I really wanted to;
• There are several activities I would like to spend time doing, such as learning to draw, studying a new language, practicing guitar and, of course, read more;
• We plan to do some traveling after we retire, and there are places I want to go and people I would like to visit.

It will be very interesting to reflect back a year from now and see if I actually made the right decision in retiring. But right now, it certainly seems so.