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| O'Brien and wife Kristin |
It’s quiet during these walks to work.
Passing through neighborhoods, I mostly manage to miss kids being hauled to school and the rush of others to their workplaces. Although, the rush in a small town like Ashland is something which I am still settling back into. I wasn’t planning to return to Ohio. I’ve been fortunate enough to see the sun crest over mountains in Japan while I taught on mission with the Wakakusa English Program, over bustling cities with their blaring traffic while backpacking in Thailand, and most recently, on the heels of a move from Raleigh, North Carolina, back to my home state.
I first came to Ashland as an undergrad to pursue a degree in English education. While it took me a long time to find my footing in the realm of education, I was always at home in the English department here. My professors intentionally connected with us in memorable ways. Whether it was Dr. Brown tacking my “Transcedental-palooza!” sketch from the top of my old test outside her office door, Dr. Weaver inviting us in groups to his home to discuss papers from our Major Writers: Dostoevsky class, or Dr. Donatini working tirelessly to induct us into Sigma Tau Delta, our professors made sure we were known and valued. These experiences transcended the classroom. Dr. John Stratton somehow managed to make a Grammar and Usage class – diagramming sentences included – fun, like a puzzle, in a way that would impact me to view language as something to play around with and feel free to fail at; a skill that would serve me well in learning Japanese as a foreigner living in rural Japan.
When I reentered the United States after three years of teaching and missions work, I knew I wanted to shift into a different role. I moved to North Carolina to earn a Masters degree in Information and Library Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Librarianship is service- and people-oriented, organizational and detail-rich, technological in today’s digital landscape and, with a background in education, I could easily transition into the role of a school media specialist. It was a good fit.
In the span of a summer I married Kristin, an English teacher from Georgia, and we began work at GRACE Christian School in Raleigh, NC. As a media specialist in the middle of the Research Triangle, I worked with the school administration and IT department to update their library into a more modern community space, worked alongside the 7th - 12th grade teachers to integrate technology with their lessons, connected kids with books that would encourage them to fall in love with reading, and provided instruction on best research practices for our students. I taught lessons on fake news and how to evaluate information, helped manage a grant that the Computer Science department received during my final year there, and worked with the English teachers to help create a school-wide culture that promotes reading. While the work was frenetic, it was also fantastic, and it was a community in which I was completely invested.
Unexpectedly, during the December of our third year working at GRACE, my father had some serious health issues. Living long distance while my father recovered for a year afterward made us realize we wanted to be closer to family. And while his recovery was remarkable, we still sensed it was time for us to move. Kristin and I told our boss we would not renew our contracts after the next school year ended, and we discovered our path back to Ohio in pieces over the next several months.
I transitioned away from school media librarianship to begin work at the seminary library here in Ashland. We purchased our first house instead of finding another apartment for rent. Kristin found an English teaching position at a school in Mansfield. Our orange tabby cat, Canyon, endured an agonizingly long car ride through the mountains of West Virginia, which would take him several days to recover from. The transition back to Ohio is still ongoing, and is a year of “firsts” for us, but it feels good to be back.
I can take the interpersonal skills I’ve gained overseas, what I have learned about librarianship, and the digital skills from working in a technology-rich school, and apply all of these to my work at the seminary. I have a fantastic boss and wonderful co-workers who let me know that they value what I do, and that I am appreciated here. I can bring the sum of my experiences back full circle. It’s my turn to pour into the lives of people here, and do what I can to make others feel valued, known, and that they matter. I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
