A Few Words on the Prospects of Retirement

A Few Words on the Prospects of Retirement

On Saturday morning just past, I donned my black robe, my colors, and my velvet hexagonal mortarboard and marched into the Chapel with my colleagues for my last commencement as a regular faculty member. These occasions, many over the last thirty-four years, carry a different feel for me than they did when I first lined up at the end of the double column in the year of George Orwell. That year would be 1984.

At the end of the ceremony, after an excellent talk by Richard Mouw, class of ’61, the seven of us who are retiring were asked to stand for a round of applause, and then we marched out into the damp, cool morning as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world.

And it was. Ordinary, that is.

I have been asked since I informed the Dean of my retirement intentions in January and increasingly in these last weeks, whether I was, essentially, happy or sad about being let out to pasture. These questions are generally accompanied by questions as to whether I have “plans” for retirement, whether we will move from the area, and whether I am counting down the days remaining before . . .well, before the last whatever !

The answer to these sincere and well-intentioned questions, remarks, and congratulations falls somewhere between the good and the bad ends of the spectrum. Life as I have experienced it is not a simple series of binaries – yes or no’s, good or bad’s, black and whites. Nor does it involve following an outline with inflexible rigidity. 

My response to the good people who extend themselves, then, is more complicated than brief conversations usually permit.That is why, I suppose, we resort to clichéd responses. “How are you?” “Great, how are you?” “Wonderful.” we exchange in passing. So, at the present moment I answer, “yes, I have projects, we will stay here, and I attach no special meaning to lists of last things.” These responses suffice, I suppose, because most people want direction not detail; but a better answer is more particularized and time consuming.

If you have the time, then – or, better, if you will take the time, here is how my particularized response would begin. I would say that teaching, overall, has been great.  I began teaching forty-five years ago with no desire to teach and with no methods to make it happen, but with fairly simple motivation: I needed work. I am walking away with a great love for the possibilities of the classroom and for my students, with habits of mind and process that continue to energize me and attempt to engage the great possibilities of life, and with gratitude to be at this juncture, like graduates everywhere, for the formative experiences of the last half century and for the opportunities that lie ahead.

In my first self-evaluation as a young teacher, I called myself "a writer who teaches," appropriating a phrase I had picked up from Walter van Tilberg Clark, whose novel The Oxbow Incident I had discovered in graduate school. I had used the phrase both as a defense against the tendency of writers in teaching to abandon the writing craft and as a reminder that teaching was a role I expected to fill for the time being. I have been determined to continue writing, to preserve through practice that "vocation" that I hoped and believed and proposed in fact constituted my truer self.  In specific terms, then, the end of my teaching career should allow me to be that writer in a more central way than has been possible to this point. 

There are variables here, of course, that involve the unknown and the Grace of God. We don't know the future in any reasonable way.  In this regard I would appropriate another phrase, this one from Matthew Arnold's 1681 poem "To His Coy Mistress": I have many writing projects and travel ideas should God grant me "world enough and time."

When I returned to my office on Saturday and hung up my robe and colors, which had belonged to my father during his teaching life, I set aside the role of teacher I have filled for forty-five years. There is no sadness.  Lots of things can happen. There is something about this moment that reminds me of being a parent.  Once you are a parent, you are always a parent. The kids may leave home but in a real way they never leave. Teaching, I suspect, has a similar impact.

The classroom is no longer beckoning but the blank page awaits. OK, let’s see what happens now.