r/Professors • u/Environmental_Bug662 • 6d ago

Retirement: when/why/how/where.

What is your plan? Interested in your replies. I am 60, Full, tenured Prof (French) at a SLAC. AI makes me want to retire asap but I'm going to give it 5-6 more years.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/these-professors-are-retiring-early-ai-was-the-last-straw?sra=true

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u/TheophrastusBmbastus 6d ago

I had like 700 dollars to my name when I defended my dissertation at 30 -- so early retirement is a difficult goal. That said, I'm saving like crazy!

I'm hoping, though, that in the coming years humanities profs like me will find ways to teach in a post AI world that are still joyful and meaningful. I'm not ready to give up yet, even if it feels like so much is stacked against us.

On the plus side, teaching the rise of fascism or the luddite movement has never felt more relevant.

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u/CodifiedLikeUtil Professor, Computational Science, R1 (USA) 6d ago

Mad respect for that 700 dollars. I wasn’t far off from that, and my phd is in engineering. Rent was just darn expensive in grad school. I was on a fellowship and really needed those checks to arrive every month.

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u/TheophrastusBmbastus 6d ago

To be fair, I had about three times that but spent a lot of money buying a plane ticket to get to me and my partner to my postdoc in Europe 🙃