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Bewig Hopes to Stroll California Beaches and Begin Fiction Writing Following Retirement

After working for 24 years in the College Counseling Office, Carl Bewig, Associate Director of College Counseling, says he is ready for retirement. Bewig is one of the many teachers this year taking advantage of the Voluntary Retirement Incentives Program (VRIP). For Bewig, the program is a perfect opportunity. “Before VRIP came along, last spring, I had been thinking of retiring at the end of the school year. The announcement kicked me over the finish line,” he said. “I have been thinking of doing some volunteer work in schools and agencies that serve young people who don’t have access to good college counseling,” Bewig said. “I have 42 years of experience someone might want to tap into. “ Before moving to Andover, Bewig worked at Oberlin College, his alma mater. At some point, he decided to volunteer for the admissions offices at Oberlin. “As a volunteer, I was beginning to get a kick out of it,” Bewig said. He fell in love with admissions, and soon got a job at Oberlin as a college admissions officer. “It was an exciting period. I made some of my best friends and raised my two daughters,” he said. “I had been recruiting for college from New England boarding schools, and visited Phillips Academy every year.” Eventually, he received a call from a friend at Andover, who was seeking a college counselor who had experience in the college side of admissions. Bewig accepted the job and made the long haul from Ohio to Massachusetts. Bewig said, “I was happy with what I was doing [at Oberlin], but I really missed the students. College counseling would satisfy the urge to return contact with students.” He then became Andoer’s Director of College Counseling, a job he kept for sixteen years. However, he later stepped down from the director position. “For many of the same reasons I moved from Oberlin to Phillips prompted me to step down from the position. I decided I wanted to be a full-time college counselor,” Bewig said. Not only would his new position as a full-time counselor allow him to interact more with students, it would also give him some more free time as he approached retirement. “I was quite excited for summers off. I felt that it would reduce my workload and was a good transition for retirement, which I was thinking about then,” he said. Bewig laughed when asked about his plans after PA, saying, “I’m not going to over-schedule myself. I’m not going to over-plan my retirement. I just want to evolve.” However, he said that he will spend a great deal of time with his children and grandchildren. One of his daughters, who was once a teaching fellow and faculty member in the Russian department, lives with her family in California. “A year from now, I don’t have to be walking in front of Sam Phil with the brisk January wind in my face. I’ll be walking on a beach in California,” Bewig said. In addition to spending time with family, Bewig plans to spend more time on his hobbies, which include singing and gardening. When he is not in California, Bewig will stay at his home in Massachusetts, a purchase he made three years ago and which Bewig claims is full of “projects and chores.” Bewig said that he plans on spending time writing, but not about college admissions, despite his 42 years of experience in the field. Instead, Bewig said he is thinking about writing fiction. Although he is excited to be able to escape from his daily responsibilities to truly relax, he says that he will miss PA and his counselees. “The one thing I can’t take from my career are the students, and that’s what I’m going to miss the most.”