The easiest decision of my life

Even after several months had passed, I could recite the exact date and time my phone rang.  I could tell you the ten-digit phone number that popped up on the caller ID, and the floor in which I was sitting in that downtown Minneapolis office building.

Over the past eight years, most of those details have escaped me.  All I remember was that it was a week day in the early spring of 2004, a bit before noon.  However, that phone call changed my life forever.

Early that year, I was assigned to an important project for a client. The IRS (the US tax authorities for my non-US readers) wasn’t too fond of the forty-five million dollar tax deduction to which my client claimed it was entitled.  I was heavily involved on a team which drafted a fifty-five page letter to the IRS detailing why our client was in fact entitled to the large tax deduction.

After many late nights in the office and a pair of voyages to Washington, D.C., we delivered the letter to our client and the IRS.  For two or three days, I basked in the glow of what I felt was an excellent work product.  My joy ceased immediately when our team received a scathing e-mail from our client.  Our client heavily criticized the effort and work product of our team.  Upon receiving the e-mail, I vacillated between anger and disappointment.  In hindsight, however, it was one of the best e-mails I ever received.

In the weeks that followed, I reflected on where I wanted to spend the rest of my career, and I began deeply analyzing the purpose of my work.  Certainly my direct client contact had not appreciated my work.  The shareholders and creditors of my client would never know me, nor would they know the effort I expended to assist them.  In fact, while a forty-five million dollar tax deduction is significant, when spread out among a great number of already wealthy individual shareholders, it didn’t seem like a lot.  Certainly not all of my clients were as negative as this particular one, and a career in the business world would be very challenging and financially rewarding.  Still, I began to wonder…is the purpose of my work mainly to make a bunch of already rich people even richer?

The one group of people that truly appreciated my work was my co-workers.  I loved my co-workers, and many of them are friends of mine to this day, in fact, I am having dinner with two of them this evening.  However, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a job where not only my co-workers, but also my clients, would appreciate me.

After receiving that phone call in the spring of 2004, I very quickly accepted an offer to become a professor at my alma mater of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.  My wife was ecstatic at the opportunity for me to get away from the corporate grind and have more flexibility to spend time with my young family.  However, she confided in me that she was afraid of one very important thing.  I am the type of individual that craves and thrives on positive feedback, and I received a great deal of it from my co-workers in the business world.  My wife feared I would not receive that same amount of positive feedback as a professor.

Recently, two of my former students separately asked if I would be available to meet them over my winter break.  Yesterday, I met one of them for a leisurely lunch and the other for an extended happy hour.  I immensely enjoyed catching up with them, telling them about the latest happenings at college, and hearing of their successes and dreams.  This past summer, I attended the weddings of five former students - all of whom I embarrassingly still owe presents to - don’t worry I haven’t forgotten.  I recall with great humility how one of those students broke down in tears when discussing the impact I made on her life.

How many of my former clients from the business world have invited me to their weddings?  Zero.  How many former clients call me to keep in touch with me?  Two, one who remains a client and friend, and the other a dear friend who contacts me whenever his travels take him to Minneapolis.  But, after nine years of working in the business world, those are the only two clients who contact me.  Do I still hear from the client for whom I labored on a forty-five million dollar tax deduction?  No.  Do I hear from the client whom I was instrumental in securing a one hundred million dollar tax refund?  No.

Do I hear from former student whom I helped, sometimes only minimally, transform from timid college freshman to a confident graduating seniors?  Dozens of times per year.  The positive feedback I receive from my student-clients magnificently dwarfs the positive feedback I received from my business-clients.

When I saw the number of the caller ID that day in the spring of 2004, I knew what the call was about, and I knew what my answer was, even before I picked up the phone. 

Had I stayed full time in the business world, I wouldn’t have taken an immediate fifty percent pay cut, and my raises would probably have continued at 10% or more per year as compared to the slightly-above-inflation adjustments I now receive. Had I stayed in the business world, I could probably live in a million dollar home and drive something other than a Chevy Impala.  I could travel the world, dining at the fancy restaurants and staying in luxurious hotels, all on big expense accounts.  So, was the switch from the business world to academia at a tough decision for me to make?

Not in the least.  It was the easiest decision of my life.  Although, not sending a Christmas card to my former client was a close second.