Retirement clarification

Image by S K from Pixabay

​
​My last post, on my starting retirement, must not have modelled clear communication since I’ve received several responses that make me think I miscommunicated—badly. So this post is to clarify. Please read so I can do a better job of telling you what I think, plan, and want, including what I want from you!
 
I started the last post with a list of things I won’t do anymore, including department meetings, paper grading, but also office hours and feedback on student drafts. To clarify—These are things I will not have the opportunity to do anymore because I won’t be working in a job as a professor/teacher anymore. These are NOT all things I don’t WANT to do anymore. Regular citizens don’t get asked to grade papers very often, and students aren’t lining up at their office hours, even if they do hold them.
 
I loved my work as a professor, and I loved most of the things I did. I loved teaching and interacting with students. I loved research and writing, even when it was really hard. 
 
Some version of some of those things will continue now that I am retired. I am continuing to lead seminars and workshops on writing, and I will continue exploring other ways I can teach and interact with people who want to learn and discover with me, including being a student myself. I will continue to write, though I expect the nature of my research to change from more scholarly topics to more everyday life. I am keeping open to all possibilities of how I might continue with some of that work I loved, just in a different form and with less time pressure.

---

​Which leads me to the second clarification: I am not at a loss for what to do, and I don’t see retirement as nothing but not doing things. I am definitely looking forward to having more space and time, and I am looking forward to having more freedom to decide what I most want to spend that time on. But I know that I will be busy, probably happily so. I will sign on to doing things because I want to do them, and those will create some obligations for me. But I am hoping to spend my time on new obligations I choose to take on. Many of the old obligations, again, were ones I enjoyed—meeting with students, designing classes and syllabuses, writing my blog, and more. Finding new versions of those old obligations will be a pleasure, not a duty.

---

I’m sure there is more that I need to clarify. The initial post was a rare one that I wrote quickly, within a couple of hours, and posted without asking my trusted reader to give me feedback first. That will teach me. Let that be a lesson to us all! Reread and revise more than once. Get others to read drafts and revise after considering what those trusted readers say. And listen to the feedback you receive after you publish, as I’ve done. Fortunately, a blog permits follow-up posts and clarifications. Phew. [adding comment August 7 to note that several readers have since written to tell me they found the first post perfectly clear!]
 
I hope this clarifies what you might have been thinking about after reading the original post. Please let me know if not. I am sad to say good-bye to many of the things I have done for 38 years as a professor. I plan to stay even more active and to say yes to many new challenges as a retiree. And I definitely want to keep interacting with you, dear reader, either through this blog or Twitter or emails or other opportunities we discover we share.

​Our adventures continue…