I turned in my application for a sabbatical next year. It’ll almost certainly be approved. Yay!
While I was there, I also discussed my future plans. I’m going to start phased retirement the year after that, 2026, and teach a 75% load that year. I’ll be negotiating with my colleagues about the years after that, but I’m thinking I’ll probably be outta here in 4 years.
I just hit my breaking point and decided to commit to an exit strategy. All of my classes are so inert — too many quiet faces staring expressionlessly at me every day. The students are fine, I just think I’m getting too old and losing that spark to trigger good engagement. They deserve better.
More good news: maybe there will be a job opening for a new biologist in a few years…if the administration eventually approves a replacement.
Glad to hear this. It will be fine!
Congratulations on both the sabbatical and the glide path to retirement. I ended up also getting to the point where it was time to pull the plug, and have just retired as of the end of this year. I won’t be sitting on the couch, though: the science teachers association in my state has already asked me to nominate for president, and I plan to work on a second PhD to keep the old brain active.
The slightly darker note is that the combination of governments not properly funding higher education and the process of central university bureaucracies growing at the expense of professors, I haven’t been replaced in the last two jobs I’ve left. Pretty confident they’ll replace me as Head of School in this one, but it’s a trend. I hope your university, students and colleagues are better set up and you’re replaced with someone just as great.
I notice some of the same trends in responsiveness or the lack thereof with my students, and like you tend to take on some of the blame for that, but in our case at least it’s more that the students are all exhausted: the material conditions of their lives mean most of them are doing full time paid work alongside their full time study. They’re hanging on trying to survive, and mustering enthusiasm in class is beyond their resources most days.
It’s not you it’s the students.
Sabbatical in Australia? Come and see some of our big and beautiful spiders (although like in your area, in my part of Australia spider numbers seem to have been falling in recent years).
But bravo, PZ, well deserved retirement coming.
Based on the title of this post, I thought you were preparing your furniture for a visit from JD Vance.
When I read the title of the post I thought you were having a Clint Eastwood 2012 RNC moment. Then I saw it was an image of Old Sparky. I’m guessing that was a metaphor for your department head?
Last sabbatical you were going to work on an evo-devo book and got into spiders instead.
Cool to see you making moves toward retirement.
Are you going to retire in Morris?
or
Leave Morris like you were fired out of a cannon?
It’s all good. I am in similar boat and planning on exiting my science career in a couple of years. I still adore the subject and the work, but the job and bureaucracy has robbed it of its shine. I plan to carry on as much as I can as possibly a consultant, or just enjoy myself instead.
I was a software engineer, working at a company that makes PC BIOS firmware. 26 years. I was so lucky. My boss liked me. My boss’s boss liked me. My coworkers liked me. The last year before I retired, they basically let me putter around doing whatever I wanted. Now I’m out, and I can’t figure out how I ever had time to work!
As noted, it’s not you, it’s the students. Who knows why? Variety of reasons, no doubt: COVID, the Internet, phones, late stage capitalism driving civilisation into the ground … it’s all bad.
Anyway, well done you. I always think it’s funny that you and I look a lot alike and often what you say resonates with me (minus the spiders, however), but I may just beat you to it and bail on the remains of my career in January. Certainly no later than June.
Don’t wait too long. Enjoy as much as you can. Cheers.