Clearing out my office – and my life 8


Helen, Heading Out (1A, with artist's name)

Helen, Heading Out (5)

A series of articles about recreating identity after an all-consuming career

By Helen
University Professor of English and Women’s Studies
Retired August 2012 at age 63

 

 

When I took an unanticipated buyout retirement package in 2012, I was on sabbatical, with expectations until then of teaching particular courses and continuing particular research projects in the fall. My sabbatical ended and, a month later, my job ended. In 2011, I had left my office, my colleagues, and my students, expecting to be back in a year. Instead I returned only to clear out my office. So I missed that winding-down final year, in which I would have known that the end was coming, that I was teaching my last courses or last class. By contrast, I had a colleague who stood on his desk and belted out the Soviet Internationale for the last class he would ever teach. The conclusion of my professional life felt a little tattered, unresolved.

My department has a tradition of combining a September welcoming party for new graduate students with a farewell to retirees (I told you we had full schedules). So I didn’t just vanish from sight. The retirement party provided some sense of an ending. The Chair teared up over the departure of my colleague and me. A friend and fellow faculty member told sometimes apocryphal stories (“bra-burning in front of the US Embassy and of course the famous incident in the women’s washroom in the English department”) and gave surprising and touchingly generous praise. Two glasses of wine to the wind, I was able to applaud the department’s strengths and pass on my last advice to the new and continuing graduate students. I needed that formal moment of closure a lot – even that much abused term “closure” feels right here – and found it anything but a mere formality.

Then I went on to clear out my office. But not immediately. Buyouts were intended to reduce budgets, and so there was no replacement hiring and no pressure to vacate my office. That was sad in itself, for the University and the students. I had several months in which to ease myself out of the building.

 

Farewell to books

“Books do furnish a room,” to borrow a phrase from Anthony Powell. And they furnish academics’ rooms more than most. Students’ reactions to office walls covered in books are often an awed query, “Have you read all of these?” To which the accurate answer would be “Ten times this many.” My partner and I had already been though two purgings of our book collections. In 2007, in preparation for a move to our new smaller house, we’d donated box loads to the University library, spread out piles on blankets at yard sales, given books to friends, taken scores to a Toronto book dealer. Moved in, we still had hundreds more than the bookshelves could manage. Selecting more to sacrifice was too painful. We had to line up book spines in row after row on the living room floor and then choose only the most irresistible. Choosing which to discard was too fraught. Impossible. I tried not to look too closely at those remaining behind, unchosen. At that stage, because it was my field of study, I’d kept my Canadian literature collection intact, relieving some of the struggle.

Then, a year before my retirement, when my partner retired, we’d cleared out his office, an easier task, because his Native literature and history collection was mostly at home. But my US, British, and other world literatures collections had spilled over onto several long shelves in his office. In culling that down to two feet of books, I reassured myself that I could just use libraries for rereading old favourites.

Now I started emptying my office bookshelves by stacking rows of anthologies and paperbacks, knee high, outside my office for students to carry off. My collection of feminist anthologies and theory I donated to the Women’s Resource Centre. Although I had collected Canadian first editions, reading catalogues and keeping an eye open for rare copies, I’d already learned that the market for most books had been undercut by the Internet. Still, I obsessively identified my valuable copies, placing green ribbons in signed editions, red ones in those personally inscribed. I had a Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence that according to the book seller’s pencilled pricing thirty years earlier had cost $200. I had editions of Sinclair Ross’s novels made valuable because he’d signed them, a rare event, when I visited him in a Vancouver nursing home. The Toronto bookseller came to cherry pick the collection and, after I’d held back the few boxes of books I loved most, mainly by women writers, a local bookseller took everything else. The Toronto dealer paid $1000 for two boxfuls, the Guelph one $2000 for about thirty boxes. In retrospect, I think I should have given all these books to my junior colleague in Canadian literature.

 

Two pounds of paper clips

Painful though the book parting was, the more difficult process was still ahead. Easy enough to clear out my desk, packing up the kettle, the extra pair of pantyhose, the crackers, the letter opener, the stapler. A matter of moments to throw out old poetry recordings for classes and my personal list of essential work phone numbers. Letterhead and office supplies I left for the next occupant of the office, as an earlier scholar had left hers for me. Then on to tackle my files, winnowed already by moves from previous universities. Out with thirty years of student evaluations of my teaching, rough copies of dissertations I’d found pertinent enough to keep, research materials, department minutes, and university policies. Most anything to do with the administrative side of my job I took distinct satisfaction in dumping. Some documents – hiring files, provincial assessments for graduate student scholarships, old grades (I kept the recent years for letters of reference) – had to go to the Dean’s office for shredding. When I’d filled to overflowing the large recycling bin in the hall, office staff arranged for my own shoulder-high bin for paper. And I filled that too.

At home, over the years, because my partner was a nationally known author, I’d been maintaining records of his correspondence and drafts of his novels, for some future library archives. So dismantling the record of my own life felt counterintuitive. And unsettling.

As I discarded files, I kept stopping to peruse the history of my academic life. Although I’d earlier culled most of my notes from my student days, for instance, I still had those from classes taught by Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, thinking some scholar might find them revealing. I discovered too my old undergraduate essays, reminding me of what I’d forgotten, that we handed in these handwritten (!) efforts folded in half lengthwise. Professional letters traced long-ago efforts, advocacy, political skirmishes, and appreciations, sometimes names, moments, and work I’d lost sight of. I kept only a few pages on major university struggles, sending documents on the founding of Women’s Studies at the University of Lethbridge, for instance, to the current Chair of that department, whom I’d met recently. My file on the recent destruction of University of Guelph’s Women’s Studies program, and efforts to stop that, I could only pack sadly into one of the two boxes of materials I would keep, having no archive in which to deposit it. As I tossed away the records of many years, I stripped off paper clips and saved good folders. In fact, having just weighed them, I can report that I salvaged over two pounds of paper clips alone.

 

Death of a Workaholic

Along with my file of letters from Canadian authors, I saved my essential selection of theoretical definitions and quotations, and some information on Native literature. Just in case. And the reviews and articles I’d compiled on my partner’s writing. But my notes and resource materials on books I’d taught – hundreds of novels, dramas, collections of poetry; Canadian, American, First Nations, and other – went into the recycling bin. So did all my teaching files, dozens of courses, years of book orders, course descriptions, schedules, essay topics, and exam questions. Throwing it all away felt rash, ill-advised. It felt final, in a way that resigning somehow hadn’t, as though I were tearing down my scaffolding. Freeing too, I suppose.

I could discard my annual professional activities reports, telling myself that much there was preserved in my resumé. Notes for my published articles and books could go, since the end results at least were in print. Even so, other observations would be gone for good. Scrapping my reviews of other scholars’ journal submissions, conference and grant proposals, and book manuscripts was harder. As was jettisoning my assessments as external examiner on dissertations or as referee on tenure and promotion of colleagues at other universities. This already invisible work had no future life, once I tossed it. Browsing through the manuscripts, I was struck by the quality of the analysis that came from immersing myself in the texts, the informed articulateness that I could hardly believe I’d produced. So one startling and rewarding result of emptying my office was a reintroduction to my strengths as an academic, both the generosity and the intelligence of my past work.

Unfortunately, the metres of files to sort left little time for extended rereading (of my early writing as a student – and the chance, as a prof myself now, to consider the comments my own instructors had made–of my interactions with editors and fellow scholars, of my struggles to improve the institutions I’d inhabited, of my unpublished insights). Going through old correspondence and records was like flipping through old appointment calendars, being reminded of entire stories and relationships. I knew that once bundled home and stored in the attic, such papers were unlikely to inspire re-examination. And they were meaningful exclusively for me. Three years later, while not doubting the wisdom of my ruthlessness, I still feel uneasy about certain losses, mourn the destruction of my history, wish the details of my life mattered enough for their preservation. Yet I have dozens of publications on the record for future scholars. And thousands of students carry my imprint to lesser or greater degrees, in ways I’ll never know.

 

Attending my own wake

Recently I came up with a reflection about dying: it is not easy saying goodbye to yourself. Now it occurs to me that the same applies to retirement. Moving on from a lifelong profession is saying goodbye to yourself, at least to one important and longstanding version of yourself. Clearing out my office did feel painfully like presiding over my own wake. Alone. My reaction was unexpected, one of the first surprises of retirement.

 

Saying goodbye to myself

Finally, once my office was empty, I had to hand in my keys. Four of the eight keys on my keychain I handed over to the department secretary, as I said goodbye. I’d hoped to slip the key to the xerox/mail room to a colleague who’d bemoaned not having one, but institutional records apparently extend back into the mists of time. I could no longer enter my office or unlock my office building after hours. I was done.

And I’ll admit, I’m crying as I write this. That’s another surprise.


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8 thoughts on “Clearing out my office – and my life

  • Judy Callahan

    Helen, so much of what you wrote resonated deeply. Saying goodbye is always hard if we are saying goodbye to something that held great meaning and purpose in our life. xoxo Judy

  • Leo

    Helen,
    Now that you have been out for a number of years what can you pass along to a Dean who will start cleaning out my office to depart at the end of this Spring semester 2021.

    thanks
    Leo

    • Helen

      Hey, Leo, and congratulations on your retirement. Looking back now many years later, I’d say that I regret less of what I discarded than I feared. Having some materials for future requests for academic talks was reassuring, but most of that has been unused. (Your plans may be different, of course. My painting has taken over from academic writing or lecturing.) I would consider carefully about what archival materials from your deanship might be valuable to your university. We have continued to jettison books and mostly find libraries will suffice. I think what’s more important is saying a proper farewell to the self you have been and honouring the strengths contained in what you may be discarding. It doesn’t hurt to save special testimonials sent to you by friends and colleagues (I’ve put the most affirming quotations into an on-line document.) And Mariella’s blogs have probably alerted you to the importance of having some (new) direction for your retirement, once the recovery and honeymoon period have passed. Best wishes for your new path.

  • Lydia Rios

    Helen,
    I have found your blog seven years after its publication and hope you are still reading these comments. Mostly, to simply thank-you. To say how grateful I am to have found this piece of your writing, on this particular day. I am 67 and in 28 more days of work, I will relinquish my role as pediatrician completely. For 40 years I have had the privilege of trespassing through the inner lives of my patients, and in many cases, multigenerational, extended families. I have spent the last few months informing as many of them as possible in person that I will leave soon, hoping to rescue them from the sting of receiving the canned letter my employer will soon send on my behalf. Today I began packing up my office, an impulsive gesture that I cannot even explain. A premature spurt of courage and personal agency. Your reference to beloved books and authors reminded me of individual patients, their struggles and victories. Their stories that allowed me in, and in so many ways my patients will never perceive, became my stories too. I lingered at the door of my office with several shelves now empty and boxed up, then finally shut off the light. Driving home I missed my closest sister, a nurse, who passed away 15 months ago. I grieved not being able to call her and share what I had begun doing today. Closing time was nearly here and I wanted to hear her wisdom and feel her support. I found her searing humanity in your words. In retirement, we do grieve ourselves, our body of work, the people we can no longer touch and be touched by. The struggle of accomplishment, ease of expertise, the knowing laying on of hands. My sister had a way of succinctly reflecting back to me what was many times too profound for me to reach. Thank-you Helen. I hope you are happy and enjoy the occasional visit with that other version of yourself. She sure sounds great.

    • Helen Hoy

      Lydia. I’m glad you found my blog helpful and so glad that you’ve shared your transition process. Congratulations on starting the business of clearing out and letting go. Retirement seems to bring the foreshadowing shock of seeing how lives are an accumulation of skills, accomplishments, and gifts that eventually will be embodied in someone else. Not easy. You are lucky to have had the sister you describe and miss. Having just 2 months ago lost a sister one year younger than me, I can guess at how hard it must be to believe your sister is gone. Except of course in her continued, treasured impact on you. Your last words made me cry. Thank you. And best wishes for the exciting adventures ahead.

  • -c.m.

    Helen, I am a Spanish teacher. After more than 3 decades of teaching, mostly in secondary education, I became a mom of 2 adoptive kids. I decided to not teach full-time, as I was privileged to be able to make that choice. For the past 10 years, I have been teaching at 2 post-secondary institutions as an adjunct instructor. The pay is ridiculous, but the occasional class, keeps my feet – and head – in the game. I have been thinking of leaving, but the thought of dumpstering my files, books, etc. literally gives me panic attacks. I cried as I read your post. It does feel like I am approaching death. I would love to pass on much of my accumulated knowledge, but with the advent of the Internet and all it provides (and diminishes,) I suppose there aren’t many 20 – somethings who would appreciate inheriting my stuff. Since I am not really an integral part of a faculty, rather a phantom that comes and goes mostly unnoticed, I don’t have colleagues who would enjoy perusing my books and other resources. I hold hope that a former student of mine, now about to graduate and pursue teaching Spanish as his first career, I will ask if there are any items he might like or might use. That is the light that is making my way forward manageable for now. I use very little of my special books or work in the community college, as we are, sadly, very text driven in the novice-learner classes.
    I apologize for going on so long, but your post really helped me feel that there are others who have weathered the years of teaching, collecting anything and everything related to our craft who also experience this need to have a wake for the Teacher – whatever is left of my persona, who is moving on. It’s so very true. Some teach. Some of us are teachers – to our souls.
    Thank you.

    • Helen Hoy

      I am so glad, C. M., that you found my article about discarding the tools of my profession meaningful. There is a lot of letting go and grieving involved in retiring. Giving up parts of us forever. And without being yet in that new place from which those losses will seem more manageable. I hope Your former student will appreciate some of your materials and books. Best wishes with your retirement.