Academia: Eine Abrechnung

Thoughts in the last days of my professional academic life.

I didn’t post yesterday. Instead, I took the train to Munich, to move the last of my books and other earthly possessions out of my old institute. Home office is an enduring legacy of the pandemic, and so I’ve only been in a handful of times this year. I found cobwebs on some of the shelves, and in one of the cabinets, an old spoon I’d used to stir tea sometime last November. A secretary had stacked my neglected post in a small pile; I threw it into the bin, unread. This morning I bought another ticket to take me once more out of the Bavarian highlands northwards, on this, the last day of my academic life. There were only formalities left – the handing in of keys, the surrendering of a faded ID that I haven’t had to show to anyone since the lockdowns started in 2020. Over a decade of writing and teaching, several books, no few stupid heavily footnoted articles that nobody will read – all of that is now over and done with.