Prologue

Ten years ago, on November 25, 2013, I flew from Münster, Germany, to Santa Barbara, California, to start work at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) as a professor in the Geography Department and as the director of the Center for Spatial Studies. So excited was I about my late-career move — unimaginable even just a year earlier — that, after the 22-hour trip, I went to a bar in downtown Santa Barbara with wifi, in order to finish and submit my first grant proposal at UCSB that same night. The following week, together with two great junior faculty from other universities, I traveled to Mountain View to share and discuss results from a Google grant we were working on. Back on campus, I started preparing for an entirely new kind of GIS class that I was excited to start teaching in January. Gatherings at the Spatial Center, chats in the hallways, and even faculty meetings were fun and often inspiring. In the evenings, while walking home through beautiful Santa Barbara, I admired the ever changing pastel colors over the Riviera. All of this and much more (e.g., the superb newcomers club) convinced me that academic life, or even life as a whole, could hardly be better than what I had just plunged into.

Fast forward to the ominous seven years later. The department‘s divisive leadership had started to remind me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, by its proposals that faculty take a loyalty pledge and that the chair would monitor and filter the departmental email-list. At the university as a whole, some key leaders with a vision had retired or moved on and were often replaced by administrators who feared making decisions. In national politics, the self-proclaimed „very stable genius“ got seven million more presidential votes than in 2016 and — more sobering for me personally — a few trusted friends started cautiously defending him. Six depressing months later, I was more than ready to leave the Farm, as well as the town, and turned my growing emotional retirement from job and place into a formal retirement and preparations to move back to Europe. The hapless (and unintentionally hilarious) farewell words from the Farm’s Napoleon, on the occasion of my online departing address, helped me and others understand that retiring now was an even more attractive option than joining eight years earlier.

Two sunny and happy years later, I am enjoying life as a reformado (i.e., retiree, but the Portuguese word seems more appropriate) in Lisbon, where my friends care for each other, their families, and their passions in life before worrying about money and fame. After reflecting for two years on what I experienced in academia, what I enjoyed and what I disliked, I decided to confess my sins against academic orthodoxy, and to do this in an open forum that anyone can read and react to. Thus, in monthly installments throughout this year, you will find here Confessions of a re-tired academic. They come from a re-tired (not just retired) academic, because I had tired of academia before. The first time was right after finishing my doctorate (which of course is quite common), and more slumps followed, on average about one every five to seven years.

Overall, however, I have always loved academic life; its freedom to choose what to work on when and where, its opportunities to learn every day, and its privilege to plant and grow ideas together with some of the brightest in future generations. My postings will hopefully convey some of this enjoyment and love, in order to encourage readers to live for their inner motivations and rewards, before worrying about fulfilling expectations and rules imposed on them by an increasingly absurd academic meritocracy.

Let there be no misunderstanding, however: I am not trying to pose as a victim or some sort of Robin Hood. I am anything but a rebellious character and have all too often gone along with rules and expectations, even when they went against my values and beliefs. Yet, I also never sold my soul, or promised to do things that I was not going to try and do. I may have sacrificed some success and recognition by ignoring or resisting academic dogmas, but I never lost self-respect or sleep over that. If and when I lost some sleep, it was typically because I had taken to heart some silly expectations or posturings from those who considered themselves more equal than others.

Also, while some confessions may read like attempts to excuse or defend my failures and shortcomings (of which there were plenty), they are never meant that way. I see no need for excuses and feel at ease with my moderately successful (and often highly enjoyable) professional path. What I aspire to, instead, is highlighting the need and urgency for academics to follow and live up to their own dreams, intellectually and practically, even (or especially) when they are told not to, implicitly or explicitly.

So here is a preview of what sins you can expect me to confess to, around the middle of each month (not necessarily in this order):

• I had no idea — until I got one: Are ideas really “a dime a dozen”?
• I dismissed research agendas: Do you prefer bandwagons or new ideas?
• I was not tempted by money: How effective is external motivation?
• I was not too productive: Would you choose productivity over creativity?
• I work quite slowly: Have you tried the satisfaction of SLOW?
• I procrastinate for a living: How can we survive a rat race?
• I sometimes engage in perfectionism: How wasteful is apple polishing?
• I disdain complexity: Should you simplify or complicate things?
• I believe in theory: What is more practical than a good theory?
• I work with those I like: Can we choose whom we work with?

Why might you want to read such tongue-in-cheek confessions? Decide for yourself, but if you sometimes worry about completing your graduate studies or getting tenure; if your relationships or health occasionally suffer from systemic pressure at work; if you increasingly feel frustrated or even burned out in teaching and research — then my confessions might show you that others have been there too, and what lifebuoys helped them stay afloat. Please let me (as well as your peers, advisors, or students) know your thoughts on the questions raised and on the opinions expressed, in comments below or otherwise.

I’ll conclude this first post by mentioning another forum that I am setting up to discuss these issues in person. Starting at the end of this month, my virtual and „think global“ Confessions will be complemented by physical and „act local“ meetings. As the brilliant social analyst David Brooks (author of The social animal or How to know a person) recently quipped „the good thing about MeetUp [groups forming online but meeting locally around some shared interest] was that you could actually meet up“. In this spirit, I will open my home (at Rua das Flores in Lisbon) at the end of each month to students, post-docs, and faculty from any discipline who would like to meet others facing (or having faced) the challenges of academic life. This series of tertúlia (i.e., relaxed and informal gatherings), which I call Flores Agora, is intended to encourage a free sharing and flourishing of ideas without any pressure to publish, graduate, fund, or get promoted. If you live in or around Lisbon or plan to visit soon, get in touch to be invited. And if, at any point, you feel like hosting similar efforts somewhere else, let me know, too!

Thank you for your interest so far. I am looking forward to hearing from you, virtually or in person or both!

Werner Kuhn, Lisbon, January 2024