When a change in family dynamics led Karen Olson to retire from her writer/editor job at the Chicago Tribune after 22 years, she pivoted to school counseling. In July she retires after 19 years on the Homewood-Flossmoor High School counseling staff. Before that, she was a school counselor at Marian Catholic High School for six years.

“I have had some down experiences, but for the most part when one kid comes back and tells me I made a difference, that’s it,” she said. “Lots of them don’t come back…but through the years they just surprise me and come out of the woodwork.”

Counseling wasn’t the only assignment Olson took on at H-F. She was the fencing coach for eight years. She also was an editor of Edda, H-F’s arts magazine. She’s written numerous letters of recommendation for seniors and been a scholarship selection committee member.

“Right now, I’m checking everyone’s grades to see who needs to go to summer school, checking seniors about getting things done, filling out schooling things,” she said. Over the last 20 years Olson said the job has “really, really changed. It used to be more of a social work thing, you found out what their aspirations were, and you suggested paths for them.”

Counseling today is a lot of data collecting, but there can be a side of caring. Olson has been the person a student came to knowing she would listen to them. 

“I’ve been there when they’re upset,” she said, remembering the very first student who walked into her office at Marian Catholic and told her she wanted to commit suicide. After her intervention, Olson and the student became friends.

“This is my second retirement,” she jokes. The Guidance Department staff is like family, so she will be keeping in touch with her work friends. Her garden will keep her busy, and she will return to writing. Even though she was a teacher and counselor, Olson said her life was never just counseling or just writing.

“When I look back on it, I almost never was doing one or the other, it’s always been one and the other. Like when I worked at the Tribune, I was teaching at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.”

Olson earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago and started teaching. Several years later she got a job in St. Charles, Missouri, teaching English for six years with extra duties for teaching students about the school newspaper “which I knew nothing about, so I had to learn about photography, design, news and I loved it.” 

She went back to school to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. From that she got a one-year internship in Germany with Stars & Stripes, the military newspaper. 

One project was to take a class into a town and interview people to learn everything about their lives and the town itself. They created a book and Olson was the editor.

She sent the book to a Tribune editor she’d met while at U of M. He introduced her to a fellow editor who hired Olson.

How does one become a counselor when you’re a writer and teacher? While Olson was teaching at that high school in St. Charles, the principal expected staff to take classes in the summer. She decided to earn a master’s degree in counseling. 

Fast forward to her time at Marian Catholic when Olson went back to school again to earn a doctorate degree in educational administration and supervision from Loyola University-Chicago. She was working on her dissertation when a Tribune travel editor said Frommer’s travel guidebooks was looking for someone to write a book on Croatia. He thought Olson might be interested because her daughter-in-law was Croatian.

“I’d never done a book before like that. I hadn’t been there, I didn’t know what I was doing but sure, I’ll do that. I just put the dissertation off a year,” and wrote her first book for Frommer’s. She’s written several others since, as well as travel articles for magazines and newspapers.