Two months of freedom. It's been nearly two months since I retired. I don't miss the daily grind and I don't miss my former workplace. I miss some of the people I worked with, but that's about it.
I was out with three former colleagues and friends last night to celebrate my retirement. We ended up at a very nice Italian restaurant called Olivia--very good food and a very pleasant atmosphere. We talked for almost three hours straight, mostly about my former workplace, since they've all worked there over the years. None of them miss it. Strange how that is. We all have different reasons for not missing it, but most of them come down to the arrogance of some of the male leaders (and one female leader) in our department, many of whom thought they were far brighter than they are, as well as the built-in egoism and arrogance of academia. The problem is that you are never good enough except when you drag in a lot of research funding. Then you are worth something. Money talks. It always has and always will. And who you know trumps what you know, every time. George Orwell's quote always comes to mind when I think about some of these 'great' research leaders "All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others". That about sums up the research experience in my former department. The bullshit that we got fed constantly was that if we wrote good grants and competed with these 'great' scientists, that we too would have a chance to get funding. The reality was that the same (large) research groups and the same researchers got funding every year, and every year one or two more 'small' scientists were squeezed out and deemed unproductive and lazy because they weren't getting funding. The lie we were asked to believe was that there was the real possibility of fair competition based on good ideas and expertise. The reality as I and many others see it was that much of the actual granting of funds was decided beforehand, based on who these researchers knew. As in, calls were made to the relevant political networks and contacts, who always take care of their own. Academia is often defined by cronyism--the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications (from the online dictionary). A very disagreeable business at times, with the emphasis on business, because in the end, it always comes down to money. Who would miss this crap or the continual scorn heaped upon those scientists who didn't want to (or couldn't) do science the way the big guys did it? Scorn is something many of them are very good at publicly dishing out, so that everyone in their vicinity knows that they're the important guys and the rest are just the stupid underdogs who should serve them. I understand that scientists need to bring in funds to do their research, but there should still be room for small scientists who never wanted to be leaders of huge research centers, who were content with a small research group and with just enough funding to get by each year. What was wrong with that way of doing science? Not everyone has sky-high ambitions; some simply want to do good research the way it was done in the 1990s and early 2000s, before politicians got involved and started demanding results for the money that was appropriated. Politics and science are not a good mix. And lest anyone think that more money equals better science, that is not necessarily true. There is a lot of good science that has resulted from limited funding. Politicians should remember that.
My self-confidence is slowly returning. The past ten years in academia have been akin to being in a bad marriage where one gets harassed for the least little thing, where there is no kindness, no empathy, no understanding, just unreasonable demands, abuse, distress and unhappiness. My friend's father used to say 'don't let the turkeys get you down'. I tried not to let them get me down every day for the past ten years. I spent much of my time trying to build up the self-confidence of students who were treated rudely by their arrogant mentors in those 'great' research groups; I consoled tearful PhD students and postdocs who were members of those research groups. That took the focus off myself, so that I had little time to deal with my own problems. But my own self-confidence suffered, no doubt about that. I remember wanting to shift jobs back in 2010 and struggling to find something cohesive and positive to say about myself and my expertise. But I am proud of the fact that I never let myself be defeated by those leaders for whom I had NO respect. That has never happened in the past and will never happen as long as I remember to put my soul first. The health of my soul trumps any attempt to destroy my self confidence, my faith, my positivity, my kindness, my empathy. The health of my soul is all that matters. The rest of it--the bullshit--can just fall away. I don't view retirement as an end to anything other than an end to ten years of bullshit. That bullshit has been placed on a huge bonfire and has been reduced to nothing but ashes. The purveyors of the bullshit are another story; I'm guessing that karma will take care of them. One can only hope. And one can hope for a return to a time when what you knew trumped who you know. But I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.
The phoenix rises from the ashes of the past. We rise from the ashes of our past selves. We are renewed. We are new people. We emerge from the shadows, we are no longer held under the thumbs of those who do not wish us well. We are free, free to fly. That is a good feeling. No amount of money can trump freedom--the freedom to decide for ourselves how we want to live the rest of our lives.
