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.
Congrats (hopefully) on the sabbatical and the formation of an exit plan. Who knows, you might enjoy the sabbatical enough to want to bring forward your retirement plans (assuming your finances aren’t the issue).
I am of a similar age, as are most of my friends, but we live in Central Texas. Given the increasingly long and hot summers and the increasingly toxic politics in this part of the world, the exodus won’t be long in coming.
Just tonight I was playing poker with a couple of friends who already have one foot in Colorado. Several others were considering Ashville last year until they realized house prices were soaring. That was before Helene, of course, and who knows how long it will take for the area to recover now.
I have friends in Raleigh, NC, which is an option, but most likely I’ll be moving back to the UK where most of my family still lives. Hot summers shouldn’t be a problem, but climate change isn’t going to leave Britain unscathed either, if all the recent flooding and storms are anything to go by.
Decisions, decisions…
Does this mean that the Golden Tap of PZ Internet Content will be opening to full flood over the coming years?
Whether that feel to the classroom is you or them, it takes a quality skeptic to apply it to yourself, that maybe it is you. May never know of course, but good luck with the glide path. Sabbatical and retirement, sounds like good plans to enjoy!
Congrats, PZ! If you still enjoy teaching, consider classes aimed at adults. When I was in school, I remember the professor writing something like phylogeny recapitulating to something on the blackboard (I know: blackboard!). Might be time for a refresher course…
PZ wrote: too many quiet faces staring expressionlessly at me every day. I’m getting too old and losing that spark to trigger good engagement.
I reply: Having been a student, I know it is the students’ responsibility (as well as the instructor’s) to engage and participate, too. I’ve heard and seen enough of your presentations to know you do effectively encourage participation and are not failing your students.
Also, it would be appropriate and helpful to have their level of participation/engagement included in their grading process. Sit there like a sack of beans, lose points toward a good grade.
However, if it is not financially penalizing, I say, ‘take the money and run’ Retire sooner and continue contributing at your own pace and on your own terms. I know your dedication to teaching means you won’t just stop.
My husband is retiring at the end of this year, after 43 years of service to the DOD – active duty officer, reserve officer and civilian employee. I had to talk him into it at first. I had found some government sites that recommended age 68 as the financially ideal age to retire from government service.
After plugging in the numbers and wrapping his head around it, he’s now looking forward to the end of the year.
We will have a lot of perks available to us. We will be able to keep the great government insurance (same one the congresscritters have) and at the same premium that we now pay for the rest of our lives.
Combined with MEDICARE and TRICARE, as well as his generous Veteran’s medical benefits, we will never have to face medical bills.
Since he retired from the Air Force Reserves, we will have the benefit of taking Space Available flights overseas from any military base. We both have Australia on our bucket list, and there are regular military flights there out of Travis AFB. I can’t wait!
He’s also thinking about teaching some classes to keep his mind active. Our house sits in easy biking distance from a 4 yr university in one direction and a community college in another, as well as the military school from which he earned his PHD, where he now works as a cybersecurity expert and data analyst.
He’s also considering doing some volunteer work for the VA in our area.
My job will be to keep him from throwing himself into too much work
I’m glad that you are set to retire, PZ. You and Mary deserve some carefree time together.
But if you get one of The Nine rings you can go on for centuries!
Downside: You may fade into a Republican, a mere ghost of your human self, devoid of empathy and full of hate. A slave to Wall Street, running its errands forever.
For now. The US’s imperial system and accompanying world-girdling military infrastructure might start to unravel soon, and once it does it will likely do so rather rapidly.
Trump getting in would likely accelerate that process, too.
“The US’s imperial system and accompanying world-girdling military infrastructure might start to unravel soon”
That’s a rather interesting prognostication.
Upon what basis do you make that claim, now that the USA has ramped up its military production and has replaced (and is in the process of replacing) much of its old inventory with new stuff.
(That Ukraine military gear aid? Yeah. Stuff that costs $$$ to maintain and is kinda obsolete anyway)
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In recent Australian news: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-24/north-australia-nt-us-defence-expansion-china-tensions-concerns/104376384
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One of the issues at hand is nuclear capability. Non-proliferation treaty.
Basically, the USA provides a nuclear umbrella to partners who have no nukes and don’t proliferate (i.e. build their own).
(Obs, Japan, Oz, Canada, S Korea, etc could all build nukes within a few years; the expertise and resources are there or acquirable, but the current regime is what it is)
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Or maybe not. He’s no longer an unknown, and the USA is functionally an empire with lots of moving parts.
FWIW I found your lectures you provided here to be engaging and was doing the exercises on paper as I was watching. But I am old, too.
… oh! What will become of all your lovely spiders?
I am sorry to hear that you are feeling as if you are somehow failing as a teacher, but I’m pleased that your sabbatical is now in place.
I hope you are giving yourself sufficient kindness as you navigate the emotional minefields of grief, and the additional energy toll of dealing with settling the estate.
You have many high-stress situations in your life at the moment, which may be coloring your outlook. Just as you are clearly dedicated in insuring that your students get the best education, remember to dedicate some time to take very good care of yourself.
Unsustainable things always seem to be ramping up the hardest-ever right before the bottom drops out. See also: the 1929 stock market. Or large-monument construction by the lowland Maya. Or subprime mortgages in 2007. Or the Soviet Union’s armaments in the late 1980s …
BB, I do appreciate your response.
Fair enough. Thanks for sharing your basis.
I note that “Always seem to” is a rather, um, subjective assessment, and unsustainable by anyone with sufficient historical knowledge.
So, it follows that on that basis and as far as you are concerned, the Catholic Church is a sustainable thing, since it’s been around for a couple of millennia yet it is clearly not ramping up the hardest-ever — it hit its peak back when Christendom was a thing (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the conquests, that sort of thing) and it truly did seem to be ramping up the hardest-ever. The New World, the Colonies!
There is no also, since there is nothing compelling in your first claim.
So. Does the Roman Catholic Church not constitute a counter-example, in your estimation?
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But I get your contention.
The harder it is ravelling, the more imminent its unravelling.
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[trufax]
Arnie, in Pumping Iron was jocularly told by fellow bodybuilders that since he was at the top, the only path left was down.
He retorted “Or, I could stay on top”.
(He won more Mr. Olympias after that)
PS some data: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget
Can he win one now?
It’s not about Arnie, BB, it’s the logic of it.
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Anyway, this is about PZ.
I am pretty sure he shall not regret this decision, and that he will follow through.
And I am happy for him.
Nice dodge.
Can he win one now?
I genuinely don’t think PZ’s retirement plans are going to be affected by any unraveling of the USAnian imperial system, despite your claim.
Did it unravel when it looked strongest after the USSR collapsed? No.
Silly claim, stupid heuristic upon which you claim to base it.
(“Pride cometh before a fall”)
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