That's a Wrap!
After 24 years, 175 offerings of 18 different classes (most of which I developed from scratch), yesterday was the last day of my 48th semester and my time as a tenured full Professor of Entertainment Technology at New York City College of Technology (CityTech, which is part of CUNY). I’m terrible at numbers so something like “24 years” doesn’t really mean anything to me intuitively, so I have to put it in perspective: 24 years is longer than anything I’ve done in my life, decades longer than any romantic relationship, 3 years longer than I’ve lived in any one place (including my home town), and about 75% of my 32+ years here in the city. 1999—when I started—is so long ago that the name of the college and the department were different, and it’s so long ago that on a syllabus from my first semester (in the picture) I posted my CompuServe email because the school didn’t have college-wide email yet (although I did have an actual office and not a cubicle).
Unlike the commercial world, where you just leave on a certain date, early retirement in academia is a strange phased process. My “Travia” leave (a semester paid given when you have enough unused sick leave) starts January 25, and in the ongoing austerity funding disaster there’s (of course) no one to replace me to whom I can hand over the keys and have any transition or continuity. So my departure is putting a burden on my colleagues; I’m trying to help them in any way that I can, so I will continue to be involved in some ways until next September, when—we hope—they will hire someone full time to replace me.
Like the end of every semester in recent years, I’m too burned out, exhausted and beaten up to be in a celebratory mood. But that time will come; once I recover I’m excited for the possibilities of the new year and a new chapter.
Note: I was given a beautiful send off from my last show; writeup of that night here.