by Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

Sabbatical Leave. There are no two sweeter words to most academics. As a profession, college professors don’t get paid much. There are exceptions, of course. Football coaches. They get paid a lot—if they are in the right Division 1 schools. Chemical engineering professors can get pretty good deals because they can be paid so much more out in the industrial world. There are other examples. But music? History? Philosophy? Even mathematics? Well…we haven’t much with which to negotiate.

Yet we don’t usually complain because many of us have the chance to take sabbatical leaves. I know what an amazing privilege that is in a world where most people are lucky to get a couple of paid weeks of vacation each year. The time to think, to explore, to follow thought experiments, and just to breathe is so valuable that the greatly reduced salary I accept in exchange seems like a good bargain.

Readers should understand that what we do while on sabbatical is not all self-indulgent. Many of us use a lot of the time to catch-up on things that we feel that we have neglected under the considerable time pressures inherent in our normal schedules. I have a colleague on sabbatical this year who is devoting part of her precious time to deepening her committee work (her committee work!) in order to serve a need in the institution. That’s why sabbatical leave is beneficial to a university. It is far from just a perq for the professors.

That said, this past sabbatical year for me, coming within just a few years of my mid-sixties, felt much more like a dress rehearsal for retirement than the career-building experience that I sought in my last sabbatical leave. I ended the previous year on a high note with the orchestra. We were on tour in the Iberian Peninsula. Our last performance was SRO in a beautiful church in Barcelona. It was great, but I came home tired. The year leading up to that tour was a wringer, and I was dog tired.

So when I put on my nametag and walked into the ensemble auditions this fall (the real beginning of the year for me), knowing that this was the first of at least five more years, I expected to feel differently at this point about my return. I expected to feel committed to the goals that I have for the PLU Orchestra and for the classes that I teach and in which I have invested a lot of time. But I also expected to have to grind it out, so to speak. I expected to feel continually drawn back to other things—retirement things.

Imagine my surprise to find that the orchestra in front of me in these first four rehearsals is one of the most exciting ensembles I have ever been privileged to conduct! Imagine my surprise to find that the new chair, the new provost, the new curriculum, the new colleagues, the new courses, and the new committee assignments that I am encountering are, far from bewildering me, exciting me!

Retirement looks pretty good in as much as I can set my own agenda—as I was able to do in the last year. But I am not ready for that yet. I still want to be a part of this university, and especially of this orchestra.