He had actually worn these once already at the Honors Society induction at ND, and his students were so excited they they got to see them first. He'll wear them again for the ND graduation in a couple weeks, and then they'll be put away until October (for $1000, those robes are going to be his Halloween costume until the end of time).
He's so happy at Notre Dame, and the students adore him. We were reading his student evaluation comments last night, and glowing is not a strong enough word. Multiple kids said it was the best class they'd ever taken in high school (and this for American Lit, not technically something he's trained to teach!), multiple kids said how they'd learned so much outside of class as well as inside, and two kids advocated for him to get a raise, haha. It was really awesome. I mean, I already knew they loved him; it's not every teacher that gets greeted when showing up to sporting events (or, in one instance I have on film, during prom) with chants of "DOC-TOR GLEA-SON!" but it was really sweet to see them putting into words how much it's meant to them to have someone who cares so much and is such a good teacher. One of the other faculty told him that it's really important for the kids to have alumni faculty, because they're natural role models, and since Sean is, as he puts it, "just a kid from East Haven" that got a PhD from Yale and is back teaching at Notre Dame, it shows them the value and the power of their education.
It wasn't a given that it was going to be this rosy. Sean acknowledged that a year ago, starting a high school job after realizing academia wasn't going to be a viable path--even as he still had to struggle to finish the dissertation he'd already defended--felt like a defeat, but he's come to embrace it as a source of real joy. As he said last night, he was never excited by academia; interested, yes, but never filled with excitement the way he is to teach these kids. And it's not just teaching at any high school that's so meaningful for him, it's that he's at Notre Dame. ND has a culture, a sense of community between teachers and students that Northwest, for all its many good points, just didn't have. As Sean has pointed out, we invited several ND faculty to our wedding (Michael and Lucy Abbott, who are wonderful, and Jack Schread, RIP, in whose shoes Sean is following), but I couldn't have imagined inviting Mrs. Juda or Mr. Tressler.
Speaking of weddings, last night was our ten-year wedding anniversary! And we spent it at ND, haha. There was an open mic night last night, and Sean had been asked to duet "Me and My Shadow" with one of the seniors. It was adorable, and it's on video! The kids were so talented, I was really impressed (choreographed yo-yoing, magic tricks, plus the usual assortment of Broadway singers and garage bands). Michael Abbott joked to me not to be surprised if we spent many more anniversaries at ND; he and Lucy got married in June, and their anniversary apparently nearly always coincides with some service trip that Michael's leading, so they're usually apart! It's fine; our celebration is actually tonight. We're going to stay at the Gwyn Careg Inn and have dinner at the Mansion at Bald Hill, which catered our reception. The weather is beautiful, and I'm so lucky to have spent the last ten years of my life married to this incredible man. Last night when we came home we opened the mini-bottle of prosecco that was part of his graduation gift from his department to have a toast. To the next ten years!
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