Start of Sabbatical Year

I almost didn’t finish my PhD – nearly choked in my last year, with several completed dissertation chapters, some of which were ok/approved, and one of which was an unmitigated disaster. It was apparently so bad that my then-advisor called to tell me he couldn’t support my candidacy for a professorship I had already been offered AND ACCEPTED—they were about to call him to confirm his professional reference. 

The year was 2006. I called to rescind my job acceptance (I had gone through all the stages of academic interviewing by then: campus interview, talk, teaching demo, meeting with everyone including the dean, who had called to offer the job). And I sank into despair. I could barely look at that chapter—I remember it was roughly 100 pages (!!!) in which I was trying to analyze a vast corpus using tools I was basically inventing for what I was trying to do. I was writing the dissertation out of residency, so I begged my advisor to meet with me—I was offering to fly back across time zones and stay there a couple of weeks to hammer it out. He refused, on account that he wanted me to take a stab at it first. No further feedback was provided.

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It’s 20 years later and I sometimes marvel at how far I’ve come. That setback cost me about 2 years out of my life (spoiler alert: I did finish my PhD, albeit with a new advisor), but here I am, persevering in this career. I am a full professor, and about to embark on my second sabbatical—this time, a full year (half pay, but hey! Worth it for my peace of mind).  

During those 2 extra years I took to finish my dissertation, I spent one doing completely unrelated things. Because I needed a creative outlet, I kept a translation blog (Fantasy Pieces, in which I translated Romanian poetry into English and tried to demystify translation– first I did a literal translation, and then another one in which I tried to replicate rhyme and rhythm), and I worked freelance for a now defunct local magazine (Rittenhouse Sq Revue), writing various features, doing interviews, book reviews, stories, and so on. I also maintained a shoe blog—Shoesense, in which I tried to combine my love of fancy footwear with my need for comfort, as I had been freshly diagnosed with plantar fasciitis. Yes, shoe blogs were a thing in 2007, go look it up. I did those things not because I had a specific goal in mind (well, the magazine did pay me a few bucks, but we can hardly call it employment), but because I enjoyed it, and they made me feel like a writer—something I always wanted to be. When I chanced into my first full-time academic job, I had to give that all up—including a fledgling medical translation career that I had picked up on the fly. I don’t QUITE regret that abandonment—but I do miss the feeling of writing purely for fun. 

Henri Matisse, LaBonheur de Vivre

Because academic writing is decidedly not fun, is it? Well, I guess sometimes, some people can have fun with it – but I confess that has only just started to happen in my career. In the beginning, it was so fraught with high stakes and expectations (Annual reviews! Tenure review! Promotion!) that it became merely a numbers’ game. I might have been excited about some of those topics (after all, I had chosen most of them), but where was the joy in the actual writing? I look back and I find some pockets of it, here and there—but was the relief that came with finally publishing a piece stood real joy? In retrospect, not really. I remember stressing over the process rather than enjoying it. But here’s the point of tenure for me: not to sit back and do nothing/rest on my lackluster laurels, but rather find the freedom to write about what I care about, in venues of my choice. After achieving full professorship, I’d say, this is the highest reward I can get—reclaim some of the joy of writing.

I want to be intentional about this sabbatical. Life as an American and as an academic is pretty stressful (as someone employed in English/humanities, AI weighs heavily on my mind, and then there’s – gestures broadly—everything else in this dumpster fire of political landscape) – and I am pretty darn privileged to take a year in which to think about my little research projects without the pressures of teaching (which are infinitely more stressful with AI). I want to get into the habit of writing daily not because I have to, but because I WANT to. 

I do well – or, say, better – when I do public writing, or write a “blog” (how quaint that word is in the era of Substacks! But I loathe having to subscribe to yet another newsletter, no matter how much I may love the writer… give me a blog any day of the week.). Maybe occasionally post to LinkedIn (who have I become? I guess that’s what the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world have pushed me to…sigh). But—I’m not doing it for readership or branding. I am doing it to stay sane – and, hopefully reclaim a bit of joy.