Happy new academic year! May it brings plenty of positive energy to teachers and students, and the thorough defeat of patriarchal darkness in all fronts and nations (yes, I’m thinking of those awful guys, who’re still sticking around like dirty flies). I’ll begin my seventeenth year as a blogger (how fast time passes!), with a reminder that all the previous yearly volumes can be found online, including the Spanish-language volumes of the translated version that I started publishing in 2021. I have considered, as I do every year at this point, taking a break but finally decided against it for fear that this would end for ever the habit of writing a weekly post, so here I am again. At least for one more year, hoping to reach the magical figure of twenty in 2030.
This year is quite special for me because, on September 15th, I’ll be celebrating my 35th anniversary as a university teacher and researcher. I have taken some breaks (a year in Scotland as a PhD student when I was an associate teacher, a sabbatical after my three-year stint as head of Departament) but I don’t think this matters. Besides, being now 60 and having served the Spanish state for more than 30 years, I could pack my books and retire with a full pension. This means that from now on, and until I do retire, I’ll be teaching and doing research because I want, not because I must. It’s quite a nice feeling!
The legal age of retirement for university teachers in Spain is 70, which does not mean I have to work until then but that I may do so. In my Department there is a sort of prejudice against researchers who retire before 70 and you can see indeed that most staff taking ‘early’ retirement between 60 and 65/67 are not active researchers, or not anymore. Those who retire at 70 tend to be full professors who then stay for a further four-year stint as emeritus, with no salary (they are getting their pensions) and with only light teaching duties, if any, but with full dedication to research if they wish so.
My good friend Felicity Hand, currently 73, is another kind of figure: an honorary professor, that is to say, a Senior Lecturer who retired with an accreditation as full professor, but no position as such. Felicity is currently writing an academic book, has recently been to South Africa on a research stay and told me yesterday over lunch about having been invited to India as a plenary speaker at a conference. She also edits the journal Indialogs. In principle, she can stay at UAB for one more year, but I don’t see she’s ready to quit. Prof. Susana Onega, currently 77, is still attached to the Universidad de Zaragoza, I’m not sure how. I don’t think she’s ready to quit, either.
In a conversation a while ago which I don’t think Felicity will mind me quoting, she basically declared her intention to go on doing academic work until she is mentally or physically unable to continue. At that point, I had been reading Richard Osman’s debut novel The Thursday Murder Club, and I was rather negatively impressed with the loss of professional credentials of the aged members of the classy residence where the protagonists live. The words ‘she used to be a professor’ struck me all wrong and I agreed with Felicity that with certain vocational occupations one’s professional identity should never be lost. Now I’m not so sure. Another colleague who is not much older than I, three or four years, is planning now to retire (it’s funny that she was my very young teacher). She has not been as active as a researcher, and when I asked her about this matter of how to understand one’s identity after retirement, she told me that she’s been very much involved in neighbourhood activism and plans to involve herself more intensely when she retires. She won’t miss the university, she claimed.
I think I might eventually become an in-between: right now, if health allows it (fine so far) I intend to work for ten more years until I’m 70. However, while at the end of Spring it was clear to me that I would continue writing after retirement, now I think I won’t. At least, not academic articles or books. I might go on writing for the nerd market, as I call it with all my respect, for I’m also a nerd, or try to become a literature populariser, writing lighter books for a general audience. I am working on two academic books and I’m beginning to think of them as the last ones I will write, at least in that style. Today, I’ve read that Prof. Terry Eagleton has published yet another new book at 83 (about death…), but he plays in a very different league. My career is far more basic than his and, although I’m doing and I’ve done so far my best, and am willing to go on for ten more years, I’m beginning to see its limitations and the absurdity of using my retirement time for it.
Since I’m a fan of science fiction, I see the phase ahead as a process of hard braking. In SF novels, interstellar spaceships travel at the speed of light, which means that they can’t simply stop. They need to employ time and energy to start slowing down until they can reach safe orbit around a planet or space station. I feel like that. It’s a process of shedding commitments and slowing down, though my friends might say that they don’t see any signs of slowing down, much less hard braking on my side. That’s not true. To begin with, I no longer do admin work in paid positions, though I participate in meetings, committees and tribunals. I’ve never had any ambitions to be the Dean of my school, or the Rector of my university, so that feels a burden off my shoulders. Because of UAB’s generosity with its researchers and the teachers in the main admin positions, I can’t remember the last time when I taught 24 ECTS, probably in 2012-13. With my reduced workload of (currently) 17 ECTS, and the opportunity my seniority gives me to teach whatever I want, teaching feels quite comfortable now. I wish the groups were smaller and I had less to mark, but don’t we all?
Writing, then, occupies the time I formerly used for admin and to teach 7 ECTS, which explains my hyperproductivity since 2019. However, this hyperproductivity is beginning to feel superfluous. I have a nice, long list of publications but I find less and less satisfaction in the articles I publish because they usually entail navigating negative peer reviewing. Book chapters are more satisfactory because I enjoy working for an editor keen to promote and protect my work, as I do in the books I edit. At this point, however, 31 years after my first paper was published (well, actually book chapter), I don’t think I have in me a ground-breaking paper. I look at my Google citations page, and I understand very little, for papers (articles/book chapters) that I didn’t care much for are the most often quoted, and others I put my heart into are ignored. Oh, well, that’s academic life.
I am beginning to find academic books, which are my pride and the centre of my career right now, not that satisfactory, either. Or, rather, I’m quite disappointed with how academic presses handle book publishing. I was recently approached by one of those scammers who offers to get your books mentioned in famous podcasts and make them the object of online book clubs with thousands of readers. I ended emailing my editors at one of the Anglo-American publishers I’ve worked for, noting that this is actually what they should be doing. Instead, academic books are published at outrageous prices, are never the object of book launches (or hardly ever) and, after all the hard work, you might get perhaps one review (and not necessarily a good one). I never expected to make money out of an academic book, but I’ve got so very little for them that, considering the money you must invest in writing them (because you need bibliography), I’m beginning to see this might no longer be my thing. Two more books, as I say, and I’m done.
I think that in all academic careers, if you take them seriously, there is a moment of sheer ambition, when you’re younger and you think that you can contribute something of significance to human knowledge. But then you need to become realistic about your chances of doing so and start finally braking hard. If I’m not going to go further than this, and I’ve already done my share, there is no need to punish myself working beyond the 37.5 hours in my contract. That, to begin with. There are books in my other languages (Spanish, Catalan) waiting for me to read them, instead of constantly reading books in English for work. I think that is what I would like to do: I started reading voraciously when I was 14 and my plans for the ten years ahead simply consist of reading more. For fun and personal insight.
Sorry about the very personal ranting, but this is an important turning point for me. In fact, I’m considering these days whether I should celebrate in some way my 35 years as a teacher (with my students), though I’ve never celebrated any other previous significant anniversary. Perhaps this is mortality knocking on my door, though I lost any fear of dying long ago. Being pessimistic (or perhaps realistic) there’s a chance the world itself might be killed by patriarchal villainy before I reach old age, so, there we are: I now feel optimistic about any mishaps I might find on the way to retirement. Apologies to my younger readers, who might think I’m in a funny mood. Well, yes, I am, but not in a funk, which is really what matters.
Enjoy the new academic year! Love everyone and take care of each other!