First, I’m kind of amazed that anyone in academia would have the financial savvy to have enough cash to retire early. I sure wouldn't feel financially secure retiring early.
Second, it got to me because couldn’t quite wrap my head around the lost research opportunities. As I mentioned a while ago, I’m scheduled to be promoted to full professor this fall. And that has been bringing me some anxiety. Full professor means you’re no longer early career, or mid-career – even given academia’s generous definitions of those terms, which mean you can be “early career” in your 40s. Cue jokes about graybeards and deadwood.
I’ve got a paper coming out that has been sitting on my hard drive for a while. It’s a reminder to me of how hard it can be to get stuff completed, and that I’ve got a lot of questions I want to know the answers to. And it’s not likely that other labs are going to pick up those questions. Which means if I don’t answer them before the clock goes ding on my career, I’ll never know the answers.
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