The Retirement Newsletter: Ten things I won’t miss about working
Issue Number: -12 — Or will I?
Welcome
Welcome to issue -12 — Ten things I won’t miss about working.
This week, I will think about ten things I won’t miss about working and ponder the age-old question — are people in the pension industry from another planet?
Ten things I won’t miss
As I was putting this list together, it struck me that it was remarkably like the list of things I would miss (Issue -15: Ten things I think I will miss from work when I retire).
10. The commute
The commute was also number 10 on the list of things I will miss.
While I will miss the ‘me time’ and the sunrises, I won’t miss the stress of the drive down the motorway and the early morning starts.
9. Graduations
I will miss seeing the students and meeting their parents. But I won’t miss the ceremony. I won’t miss the speeches. And my hands won’t miss the clapping.
8. The early mornings
I will not miss the early morning starts.
On mornings when I have a 9 a.m. lecture, I leave the house at 6:30 a.m. to ensure I’m on time. The drive should take 45 minutes, but on some mornings, it takes 2 hours.
7. Teaching labs (practical classes)
I will miss teaching labs, but what I won’t miss is teaching the same lab six times in a row over three days. I’m not doing my best work by the time I get to the sixth lab. No matter how hard I try.
6. Unexpected conversations
I will miss the unexpected conversations with colleagues that make me think or lead to new research. I won’t miss the ambush conversations where you end up with a task or project I would rather not do, and I know that it’s been palmed off on me.
5. Students question (non-academic)
I love academic questions from students; the type of question makes you think about science and your understanding. I won’t miss what I call “procedural questions”, the types of questions you get about assessments and exams that the students could quickly answer by looking at the instructions given. For example, the student — “What’s the word count?” — me, “It’s at the top of the sheet I gave you last week”. Student, “When does the term end?” — me: “Here’s a link to the university calendar”.
I will not miss those questions.
4. Email
The never-ending stream of email. It never stops.
I have long given up trying to achieve ‘inbox zero’ — it’s impossible and causes too much stress.
I often get students complaining about how many emails they receive. They go silent when I tell them how many emails I get on an average day (usually how many they get in an average week).
No more work email — bliss.
3. Giving bad lectures
I will not miss giving bad lectures.
Every lecturer has a few duff lectures in their collection. If they haven’t, they are lying or have no self-awareness of their teaching.
I currently have two or three lectures that are not quite right. It’s the usual things — they are a fraction too long, so I rush; they don’t flow; the story isn’t compelling, or they are not a good fit for the narrative I am building across the course. Occasionally, it might not be obvious, and it’s a lecture that I feel I didn’t ‘land’ — it went flat and lacked energy.
When I lecture, I find it takes 2 to 3 goes before I get it right. Sometimes, I never do. After ten years of giving it, I had one lecture that still didn’t feel right. I tried to fix it every year, but it didn’t work.
I won’t miss bad lectures.
2. Some of my colleagues
Some I will miss, some I won’t! What else can I say? Likewise, some of my colleagues will miss me, and I know some won’t.
1. The pointless paperwork
In January 2024, I will have been a university lecturer for 25 years. During those 25 years, I have seen an alarming increase in the paperwork and form filling I need to do as part of my job. It is unreal. The amount of time I get to deliver teaching has not increased, but the amount of time I get for form filling has.
The problem is what I am “assessed” on in my job is teaching, and I’m given less time to prepare my teaching. I have never been commended on my excellent form filling or completing the forms on time.
If I get bad teaching scores or student feedback, I meet with my boss and have to produce an “action plan” to address my shortcomings. It doesn’t matter that only a handful of students out of 200-300 are unhappy. I’m in trouble. This has only happened to me once in my career. A group of students were unhappy that I kept commenting on their lack of engagement with online material and scored me down for being ‘grumpy’. I had to explain to my boss why I was ‘grumpy’ and agree not to be ‘grumpy’ again.
These days, I apply a simple rule to all work requests I receive. I ask, “Will doing this work now improve the student experience?” If the answer is yes, it gets done as soon as possible. If the answer is no, it gets parked until I have time or get asked again. Sometimes, the person asking for the work forgets they have asked. Win-win.
Pension quote
This week, I received a pension quote from my pension provider.
And it's as clear as mud.
The issues I have with the quote are:
It's unclear how the figures are derived.
It is not immediately obvious how figures in different sections of the quote relate to each other.
The numbers in the quote differ from the numbers I can see on the pension website.
When you feed the figures in the quote into their ‘benefits analyser’, you get different numbers back to those in the quote.
Why is this so complicated? It’s as though they are from a different planet and are speaking a foreign language. You could be mistaken for thinking they are trying to hide something.
I booked a call with them to see if they can explain things more clearly.
Clocks — end of summertime
Last night, the clocks went back in the UK. And it reminded me of a story my dad told me many years ago about what happened before I was born.
One spring, long before clocks changed themselves, he put his clocks back an hour instead of forward and couldn’t figure out why his brother had popped around two hours early.
So, remember, if you have or are about to change your clocks, it’s "forward into spring and back into winter”.
Travel — Nostalgia Corner
This week, here are some more tales from my time in Malaysia:
Malaysia — Kota Johor Lama Museum, Kampong Johor Lama, 81900 Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia— Looking for the past in Malaysia is not easy. Many of the pre-Portuguese structures in Malaysia were built of wood and rotted away.
Malaysia — Dusky Leaf Monkeys (Trachypithecus obscurus) — Kampong Johor Lama, 81900 Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia — this was a rare sighting. Crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis), I saw most days, but in the nearly three years living in Malaysia, I only saw Dusky Leaf Monkeys (Trachypithecus obscurus) four times.
Malaysia — Fishing Museum, Tanjung Balau Beach, Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia — A museum about fishing?
Malaysia — Tanjung Balau Beach, Kota Tinggi, Johor, Malaysia — This is a beach!
Next week, I’m off to the Zoo in Johor Bahru.
Next week
Next week, should I get a dog?
Thanks
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Until next time,
Nick
PS, If you want to contribute something to the newsletter — a story, advice, anything — please get in touch.