Dear George,
I retired from my faculty job at the university in 2009, but, thanks to available space and a generous departmental policy, I’ve been able to maintain an office there since that time. It definitely eased the shock of retirement, since I still found myself continuing to go to my workplace four or five times a week. Though I was no longer teaching or doing research, I used the office for writing tasks on the computer, including working on this blog and later poetry projects. Over time my use gradually dwindled, and the pandemic drastically reduced my time on campus. Recently I was notified by the department head that the university was shutting down the entire 16th floor that my office was on and that he was looking into alternative space. I told him that it wasn’t vital to me to have an office, but he persisted and, much to my surprise, came up with a larger office than my current one, all my own. The university’s moving date will be August 15th.
This left me in a quandary. When I retired I disposed of about half my books and some of my files, e.g., old exams, grad student projects, faculty meeting notes. However, I held on to five file cabinets full of documents related to my career: e.g., all of my lecture notes, all of the xeroxed articles I used in teaching and research, published and unpublished papers, research data, even a couple of undergraduate college papers, my grad school class notes, and the materials from my dissertation project, now 55 years old. I haven’t had the need to use any of this material for the past thirteen years — I don’t think I’ve even opened most of the file cabinet material drawers. If all of this material vanished overnight, it wouldn’t have any tangible impact on my existence.
To make my decision still worse, the deparrment put a large recycling bin in the hallway outside my office for use by myself and two of my emeriti colleagues who are also moving. What to do? I could get rid of all of the stuff, half of the stuff, or none of the stuff. While all that paper material had no practical value for me, it had a lot of sentimental value since it documented the entire course of my career (plus representing perhaps ten thousand hours of effort on my part). As astute reader probably knows the answer to my dilemma. I decided to keep everything, down to the last paper clip. So far I’ve boxed up my five file cabinets into 22 sizable cartons, and next I have to work on my books, desk, and table, saving all that as well. It was just too disturbing to say goodbye to my entire career. I’ll force myself to throw a few things out the next time they tell me to move.
Love,
Dave
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