A Meaningful Academic Life: Loving, Fulfilling, Challenging, and Flabbergasting
A Meaningful Academic Life: Loving, Fulfilling, Challenging, and Flabbergasting

Summary/Abstract: In this essay, I present the talk I gave at the celebration honoring my retirement from University of South Florida (USF). Held on January 25, 2019, this event was attended by an audience of friends, students, and university faculty and administrators. I tell several stories about coming to USF, meeting and collaborating with Art Bochner, and the support I experienced and the fulfillment I found in my university life. Passionate about teaching from the heart to the whole person and doing research that matters, I describe the meaning I derived from participating in an interpretive and qualitative Communication program that focused on the human sciences. I end with 10 aphorisms or observations from lessons learned in my experience of four decades in the university, some of which allude to the unnamed challenges I experienced among the great joys and good fortune of academic life.

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