Navigating universities

It’ feels strange to retire from a lifetime of university work, especially when I’m still busy with research projects and research students. But today, La Trobe University formally acknowledged my retirement with a citation as emeritus. I responded with these reflections on navigating universities and academic life.

This photo is part of these reflections. It shows the upside down Charles La Trobe statue, which stands in the grounds of La Trobe University. Somehow, this statue says something about the university ––

• that ideas should be turned on their heads

• that universities are full of eccentric people who find fun in unlikely places

• that the weight of the world is slowly driving universities into the ground ....

What do you think?

In the university’s invitation to today’s ceremony, I am profiled using a photo that was taken around 1998. I remember because my eldest daughter was 12 years old and, that day, we’d been gold panning at Sovereign Hill. I used that image for all my professional work while I was at Monash University. It helped me remember that despite the exponential increase in workload through the late 1990s and 2000s, I was still a human being with a life, love and laughter beyond what, for a while, became a rather toxic workplace.

When I came to La Trobe University, I discovered a place that reminded me of the old Monash I’d once enjoyed. There were grandfather figures and people who got indignant about regulatory demands on the university and how they constrained academic freedom. But coming from Monash in the 2010s, I found this ‘academic freedom’ felt like a rather leisured lifestyle. There was coffee at the Agora, little projects with graduate students and a need to debate everything, whether you agreed or not––because debate was the academic way.

When I took on the role of Director of Research in the La Trobe School of Education, the university provided my webpage photo, which never felt like me. Yet in that role, I realised how Monash made me a more intellectually-focused academic. Those work demands and regulatory expectations offered boundaries, which meant I could cut to the chase. I gave priority to knowledge building and associated activities that would sustain the core knowledge work of the university and advance my intellectual project. So, I cleared my desk of administrivia and walked away from those endless debates that felt like trappings from the old university boy’s club. I also tightened up my own laissez-faire practices, which were making my work harder especially with Research Degree students.

Last weekend, I changed the profile picture on my personal webpage to capture my new unemployed place in the world. This place is still anchored by my intellectual project. But I’m pleased I learned about the ‘fuck it bucket’ at Monash and had the opportunity to apply that learning at La Trobe. Both institutions helped me give priority to knowledge work in projects, publications and with students. And now, I am actively interfacing those ideas and ways of working with my life, my creative writing and editing, and the fabulous people across universities and communities who affirm education and arts, each saving some part of themselves for creative intellectual work and their public contributions.

My 40-year academic history makes me realise how helpful it’s been to recognise the power of performance. That 'ah ha' moment allowed me to protect my creative self from the demands of my universities that had, already, produced the defensive woman at Monash and the profiled professional at La Trobe. Unlike those two photos that both seemed to squeeze my soul, my new avatar suits me well. A pixelated cartoon image is an artistic creation in its own right, my webpage photo muddies the interface between me as profile and me as person. That cartoon image captures my strengths better than either of the other two photographs.

Avatar: A retiring professor can play.