I began university work forty-one years ago and will wrap up in one hundred days. Let the countdown begin.
While I have been attending to my advisees as fully as I have in the past, I must confess to attending less and less to the policy issues concerning the wider university and my own college and unit. Having studied our learning community at length—the universitas magisterium et scholarum—I’m quite confident that the rearrangement of academic deck chairs on this particular vessel will not significantly affect the cruise. I have been asked to consider and, as much as possible, inscribe “my legacy,” but it has been modest at best, merits no especial mention, and will likely endure or expire for reasons entirely beyond anyone’s control who cares. I am, in the current parlance, quietly quitting.
So my next hundred days I’ll attend largely to closing up shop: setting up my current advisees as perfectly as possible, coaching my successor colleagues, and saying good-bye to professional, by and large younger, colleagues. (Oh, and napping.) Having been here so long, many of my former colleagues are already retired, and more than a few, deceased, Alice, Phil, Susan, Laurel, Jim, Cindy, Judith, Vicki, Lois, Bev, Tina, John, and some whose names are not coming easily to mind. One has to focus . . . Ted. And Christine. My friends, we have done good work.
