BoD: The Cliff Walk

The Cliff Walk: A Job Lost and a Life Found is a warm and emotional memoir from 1997 continues to resonate today with professionals in so many industries either out of work or facing career insecurity. Don Snyder taught at Colgate University and was frequently nominated by the Student Honor Society for the ???professor of the year??? award. Yet, with university budgets all over the country tightening, Snyder???s contract was not renewed.

At first, he felt the normal amount of anger, denial, and self-pity but then righted his course and actively began seeking a new teaching gig, confident in his CV and his experience. After receiving more than 100 rejection letters from colleges, universities, junior colleges, and just about anywhere that offers classes, Snyder found himself using learning to use food stamps, wrestling with his identity as father/husband/provider, and ultimately, painting houses and struggling to learn carpentry.

Emotional, but not sappy. Warm, but not syrupy, The Cliff Walk is an excellent meditation on rejection, lost dreams, evaluation, and the building process of something new. The Amazon review says succintly ???This book might have been preachy or self-indulgent. It is neither.???

Check it out here.