Science teacher Dr. Bill Personette is leaving Trinity after 26 years.
While most know Personette as a chemistry teacher, he also taught several sections of algebra his first year.
Personette went to graduate school at the University of Florida, and he moved from North Carolina to Florida in 1985 before finally moving to Winter Park in 1992. He then worked at Rollins College for two years as a visiting professor and taught at Valencia Community College. One morning a secretary at Rollins called Personette and told him there was a job opening at Trinity. That summer, the science department chair watched Personette teach a class at Valencia and then invited him in for an interview. Personette had once given a lecture about jobs in chemistry, at Trinity, when he was still teaching at Rollins.
Personette said he is going to miss the people here at Trinity.
“When I got here, even back in 1995, when I started here, people seemed to click fairly well, it wasn’t perfect, but there seemed to be a certain degree of camaraderie, and people were serious about learning,” Personette said.
Dr. Personette is making it clear that he is not retiring. He is just leaving.
“I made that perfectly clear to everybody, I’m not retiring,” Personette said.
Personette doesn’t know what he is going to do next.
“I’m an idealist,” Personette said. “I mean, I didn’t go for an advanced degree in chemistry, just for the big bucks, so to speak, but I did it because I really enjoy experimentation, learning, and I was never overly concerned about what people’s opinions were of me in terms of my capabilities and where my heart lies.”
Personette has even considered going overseas to Germany or possibly the Netherlands.
“I just need the time to look around and see what’s happening more than just the summers, which I appreciate,” Personette said. “But there’s a phrase, I think it’s a paraphrase, ‘if you love something, leave it alone,’ so there’s a time where you just got to leave certain things alone.”
