When I posted about the new term back in September, I closed by saying that I anticipated “some coming changes that I will also want to write about, when the time is right.” I think it’s time now, because now it’s finally settled: I will be retiring at the end of this academic year, which means that next term, Winter 2027, will be my last teaching term at Dalhousie.
It was a very difficult decision to make, one that preoccupied me for much of the summer. Local people will know that King’s (where I am technically employed, though I do all my work at Dalhousie–it’s complicated, nobody really understands!) is in some financial difficulty, a situation that is common for Canadian higher ed institutions at this point but perhaps particularly tricky for a small rather niche place like King’s to address. As part of the college’s efforts to retrench (a word I will never hear without thinking of Sir Walter Elliot!) they put together an early retirement package and gave eligible faculty and staff to the end of August to apply for it. Without that offer, I would probably not have thought to retire quite so early, but I knew I wouldn’t have persisted for many more years, so the question boiled down to “if soon anyway, then why not now?” This doesn’t mean that it was simple to answer! But the things that made it complicated–the things that are going to be very hard when this year is up–are always going to be difficult for me. At some point, I’m just going to have to face them, work through them, and see what lies beyond. There’s something to be said for doing that before I get much older.
So I submitted my application at the end of August; last week it was approved by King’s, and I signed off officially on the plan on Friday. When I’m done, at the end of June 2027, I will be 60 and will have been doing this job for 32 years. I had the great good fortune to get the offer before I had even completed my Ph.D., which I was happily able to wrap up expeditiously at that point. It is fair to say, then, that this job has defined my adult life–for better and for worse. The prospect of not doing it anymore is disorienting: I have feelings about it! Be warned that some of those feelings will no doubt show themselves in my posts this year, especially my posts about my classes. It is just so strange and sad to think of the things I won’t do again, like lead discussions of The Moonstone (why is it that The Moonstone is the novel I feel the most regret–at the moment, anyway–about never teaching again? I think it’s that I have always had so much fun with it) or introduce students to the delights of David Copperfield or surprise first-year students into enjoying poetry. (OK, that last one probably reflects some wishful thinking on my part, but maybe it did sometimes happen?) I might have put in for different classes this year if I’d known they would be my last ones, but on the bright side, I did assign Middlemarch for the 19th-century fiction class. I’m really glad about that.
Feelings, so many feelings. So much has happened in the rest of my life while I kept on going to work; sometimes going to work, and especially being in the classroom, was the one thing that kept me going. The scariest thought for me now is: can I really do without it? How often have I written here about my summer slumps, for instance? How many times did I experience the therapeutic benefits of having to get outside my own head for a while and be fully in the moment? Where else will I find the same sense of purpose, the same satisfaction of a job well done, the same rewards that you get from knowing you have helped or inspired a student, working with them on ideas and enthusiasms and skills they will carry forward with them into the life they are making?
I know, I know: there are other ways, other roles, other opportunities. I have heard all the advice about having something to “retire to” and I get it, and I have ideas, although it seems a bit much to be expected to have that future all figured out now, while I am still working full time at my regular gig! I also know there are plenty of things about work that I won’t miss, from tedious administrative duties to the worsening crisis that AI has created for the kind of teaching and learning my career has been dedicated to. It has not been a good few years in higher ed–it’s been a bad couple of decades, really, but recently the imperative to “do more with less” has gotten us to what feels like a tipping point, such that it is getting increasingly difficult to do anything at all. And yet, and yet.
I know too that a professorial career like the one I have had–already elusive when I was hired here in the mid 1990s (something we had some personal experience with, as my ex-husband had a much longer road to his tenure-track position)–has become a kind of mirage, something that far too many brilliant and exceptionally qualified people will never have, in this era of exploitation and precarity. It should not be this way. It’s not that senior people who don’t retire are the problem, either: most of my colleagues who have already retired have just never been replaced. The Dalhousie Calendar is full of courses we will never put on again. I think probably “my” classes will be taught again–though possibly only on an ad hoc basis by folks on part-time contracts. I suppose it’s also possible that the department will be able to add up all the recent departures to finally make a successful case for at least one new full-time position, but would 19th-century fiction be a priority? It’s easy to make fun of job ads that seem like shopping lists, but if you get to hire only one person where you once had three or four or five, how do you make the most of the opportunity?
Anyway, this is going to be a year of reflections for me; an elegiac tone seems inevitable! I am actually curious to look back through my teaching posts, which cover almost twenty years now, and see what patterns and shifts and insights emerge: endings always give shape and meaning to what has come before. I am not done yet, though! This week and next we are working through North and South, and then we start Middlemarch and I am going to really “giv’er” this time. After that comes Jude the Obscure; it’s good I still have next term to go after that, since that would be a real downer of a conclusion. Part of my retirement negotiation was for a lighter load next term, so I’ll have just one more class to go after Christmas, which will be my Honours seminar on women and detective fiction. It’s not necessarily what I would have chosen as my swan song, but one of our texts will be Gaudy Night, one of my personal top ten novels, and I expect that its inquiry into the values and compromises of the academic life will be particularly resonant as my own experiment with that draws to its end.
I have so many thoughts not least as I have just recently been retired and the use of passive voice is deliberate. In a way I am glad the final course, while it went well, was a fairly generic first year course not one of my landmark ones. If the course I taught in the first summer term had been the last one I would have felt such grief as that upper year Modernism course was an amazing final visit to my doctoral area and some favourite texts with a great group of writers who brought so much to discussion. I remember when you first taught at Dalhousie; I was in Halifax teaching part time between Montreal and Vancouver. Very best good wishes! (I do know replying by email does odd formatting things but my browser seems not to like signing in to WordPress.)
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I retired after 38 years of teaching. I miss it; I actually have great teaching dreams! But I have found other venues: teaching adults in local community centers, bookstores, and facilitating private book groups. Fulfills my penchant for curriculum design and introducing readers to new genre. You’ll find your way! Best wishes.
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Well, I’m going to say congratulations! I know myself that it’s not an easy decision to make, but the weight of responsibility off your shoulders is a marvellous thing, trust me.
I knew I would not miss the admin, I knew there was not one teacher I would miss, but I did think I would miss the children and I thought I would miss the intellectually stimulating aspects of my work. But I have never been back, never wanted to, and I have never missed the children at all. As for the intellectually stimulating things about my work, I realised (doh! after 45 years) that I was investing my intellect in things that were not ultimately satisfying. I was so good at strategic planning but it was other people who valued that and told me I was indispensable. Good riddance!!
If you take my advice, do not rush into accepting the multiple offers to fill your days with volunteering. There are so many organisations that need the skills and abilities of good people, they will all want you, but I found I needed time to adapt to and then relish having no obligations. Then fill your time with things you want to do but have never had time to do. After decades of hard work and overwhelming responsibility, teachers of any kind deserve that:)
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I am interested in and receptive to your comment about not rushing into volunteering. There’s this sense that you will need to fill the time, and I expect to want to do some of that, but committing to too much too fast definitely seems like it could backfire.
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I think it’s normal to fear idleness and ‘having nothing to do’. But from my observations, it’s the people who go into retirement plannings endless days of golf or tennis that come unstuck. They don’t know how to fill the days between. But we who love the arts don’t fall victim to that:)
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Dear Rohan,
I have certainly enjoyed your posts and ‘musings’ over the past few years…
Unlike you, I am not an English Lang and Lit scholar, simply a fairly intelligent architect/engineer (and peripatetic lecturer in those disciplines) with an abiding love of Literature in (nearly) all its forms.
Victorian literature features highly and I am a long-standing member of a few Literary Societies: e.g., Browning Society and Trollope Society, as well as some others including the Austen Society and the Thackeray Society. And I am one of the originators of the London Association of Phi Beta Kappa (the American Honor (sic) Society), and its ‘Guilty Readers Book Club. Your post (and your selections for teaching this term) reminded me that the first book the ‘Guilty Readers’ read (and I led) was Middlemarch, possibly my favourite novel of all time. But I have also led The Woman in White (partly set in my neighbourhood in near-north London) and The Moonstone. So your musings here resonate.
I wish you luck! When one loves his vocation (I use the term advisedly), retirement is never going to be easy. But, I’m supposing you could always do some ‘guest lecturing’ elsewhere?
Please do not stop telling us what wonderful discoveries you make in the Literary World?
With very best wishes,
Patricia
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It is good to hear how many ways you have found to share your literary interests! I hope I will figure out what things like that work for me – but who knows, maybe I will discover I want to do something altogether different! (But I will always want to talk about The Moonstone if I have a chance. 🙂 )
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I’m another who ‘was retired’ a few years ago (not a viable degree course was the reason given). It was a wrench at the time, but I agree with Lisa: take some time when your final term ends to wind down, relax into the new way of being and enjoy the positives. I hope you keep on posting here – that’s one activity you’ll have more time for.
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It is so unfortunate “being retired”: although the timing of this is not 100% what I might have chosen, I do feel lucky to be able to set some of the terms and make a choice about it. I will certainly keep on posting here!
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I took voluntary redundancy at the end of the summer quite unexpectedly. I was told in June that my post was at risk of compulsory redundancy and taking the decision to apply for voluntary redundancy was not difficult for me. Like you, I had planned to retire soon and I felt it would be morally wrong to linger when my much younger colleagues were not in a position to retire.
This is my first September freed from the Academic calendar. After a week, I asked myself what I have done but I am now tentatively putting in place new habits.
I have started learning a new language, which is something I have wanted to do for years. I am having a lot of fun putting into practices all the language learning tips I have given my students over the years 🙂
I am also opening myself to new opportunities. And I have planned a little trip at the end of October, just because I can for the first time ever!
Make the most of your final academic year. I didn’t know that 2025-26 was my last one but I don’t regret that it was.
I am looking forward to reading about your new adventures!
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Not being on the academic calendar is one of the things that I imagine will feel the strangest. For decades I have simply not been able to even consider things like travel in the fall, which is actually our loveliest season here in Nova Scotia. So many things that just ran up against “can’t do that, it will be the middle of term” – and yet I have always loved the excitement of going back to school.
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I wish you a happy final stretch for your teaching, and a prosperous and fruitful retirement. I look forward to seeing where life (and reading!) takes you next!
What you write here about the state of universities is sad and true. I graduated with my PhD from a Canadian university in 2019, and to my supervisor’s chagrin, refused to even contemplate pursuing the elusive tenure-track route. I knew it wasn’t worth it, and that I couldn’t afford years of ridiculous pay and bad conditions for the sake of a steady tenure job that was never going to exist — I have seen and heard of so, so many outstanding PhD graduates who could never escape from the adjunct circuit no matter how many publications they had, conferences they attended, courses they taught, etc. My English department also had the issue of profs retiring but not getting replaced . . . I’m not even sure it would be possible for me to do the dissertation I did back then now, as I think all the specialists in my field there are gone. And my time there wasn’t even that long ago! It is shameful and upsetting, as if universities have completely given up on what their mission should be. I feel bad for the students, who go into so much debt for so little in return.
On a side note, I’m so happy to see “North and South” mentioned — I LOVE Elizabeth Gaskell and really wish she was better known amongst general readers! She’s so, so good!
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She is indeed so good!
I don’t think universities have given up on their mission, but it sure sometimes seems like their leaders don’t really understand it – and governments don’t want to fund it. We are under so much pressure to revamp our programming to serve “the job market” and “prepare students for the jobs of the future” (as if anybody can even predict what those are).
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Whatever happens, enjoy what comes next, and I’m sure you’ll find lots of things to spend your time on (like that GE book, for one!).
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Thanks Tony! Actually the book was a factor in my deciding I could face retirement a bit sooner: it will ensure I have a project to concentrate on rather than just drifting, but also it won’t (I hope) be so onerous and might even be fun at times!
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Yes, good to have something to hold onto when entering a new phase of life…
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Russophilereads is quite correct about Mrs. Gaskell. This reader loves her books (and almost anything Knutsford, a town where the Antique Shop has a memorable sign shown to very small children: ‘Unaccompanied Children WILL Be Sold As Slaves’. Wives and Daughters is well-worth close reading.
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Glad to see another Gaskell fan! My favourite Gaskell novel is “Sylvia’s Lovers”, which for some reason is not really as well-known as her other (great!) works. She had a wonderful ear for dialect and the rhythms of small communities.
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As a teacher about a year and a half away from retirement, I congratulate you on taking this step. My retirement is this and another school year away and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve enjoyed my time and hated it at times too. But I’ve had a “job” since I was 16 and had my entire career and preparing for it taken up by the “academic calendar”. I don’t know what I might enjoy doing in retirement, but to have the luxury of waking up and thinking about it is something I’m anticipating. I always try to remember something my faith has taught me: we were made for enjoyment and having the time to enjoy will bring contentment. Maybe you can make your way to Montreal one of these days?! 😉
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Getting to Montreal is 100% on my wish list!
Yes, the academic calendar is so inflexible: I am dazzled and confused at the prospect of doing such radical things as taking trips in October, or not thinking “but it’s a school night” when someone proposes doing something on a random Tuesday night or whatever. 🙂
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Exactly!
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Dear Dr. Maitzen,
As a former student, I am sure I can speak for many others that we will be very sad to see you go! Your enthusiasm for what you were teaching (be it 19th century lit, Mystery and Detective Fiction or your Intro classes were always palpable. Further, your witty sense of humour were always welcome. If there was any doubts that your classes were a favourite my many, simply look at the course enrolment numbers; whenever registration would open in March, your classes would fill up the fastest. Thank you for helping me appreciate literature (even more than I did when I picked my major) and for all you do for your students. Please accept my heartfelt congratulations on this milestone, and I wish you lots of happiness in your retirement.
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Thank you so much for this generous comment – very sincerely, it means so much. ❤
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As I think you know, I had to retire on the young side of retirement age and before I was fully ready, but it’s been good. I have had more time for my own writing, and hope you will too! The advice about not rushing into volunteering may be good but my volunteer time really helped me make the transition (I was a CASA, court-appointed advocate for children).
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I am definitely exploring volunteer possibilities – I already volunteer with the public library, and other options will be available when I could potentially volunteer on weekdays instead of only in the evening. At the same time, a real commitment is expected (as it should be) so I do want to be mindful about not locking myself in too quickly and then feeling annoyed by it!
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Rohan, wow, big news for you. I am wishing you a good academic year and post-academic years to come. If you ever taught an online class about The Moonstone, I would sign up! I really enjoy reading your blog and get many reading suggestions from it.
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