• ·January 4, 2026

I officially retired on Friday, January 2, 2026. I finished the last tasks of my “termination” that morning. I took the last load of stuff out of my office. I left my laptop at the tech help center. And I returned my keys to the Facilities office. The woman who took my keys thanked me for all I have done for the university over the years. And she congratulated me for getting out of “this hellhole.” Her kind words about my many years at PSU made me cry.

Over the past few weeks, there have been several gatherings for the many people who were leaving PSU on January 2. At each of these gatherings, any kind words have made me cry. It was annoying. Although I am retiring several years earlier than I expected to, I am happy to be leaving. I am excited about the future. I have lots of projects I want to work on. And traveling I want to do. And people I want to see and hang out with. Retirement is going to be great. And yet, the tears haven’t felt like tears of joy. I know part of that is the anger I feel that many of my colleagues who left “voluntarily” on January 2 did so because they were lied to about the alternatives. I worry for my colleagues who are not as close to their desired retirement age as I am. I am sad that so many of PSU’s best teachers and scholars no longer work at the University. These mixed feelings–joy and excitement mixed with anger, worry, and sadness–are partially responsible for my tears. But I began to notice that the tears spring up (present tense because they haven’t stopped with my official retirement date) when people say kind things about my time at PSU.

I had breakfast with Scott earlier this week and he recommended a podcast that he’s been listening to. Anderson Cooper’s All There Is is an exploration of grief. Scott particularly recommended the second episode “Grateful for Grief” with guest Stephen Colbert. I listened to it yesterday. Colbert is brilliantly insightful as he talks about how his life changed at 10 years old when his father and two older brothers died in a plane crash. A couple of his insights helped me to better understand my own mixed feelings about leaving PSU. Clearly, despite my happiness about leaving PSU, I am grieving. I think I am grieving the loss of an ending to my PSU career that coincides with the warm feelings that I have had about the university for most of my time there. I never imagined this is the way my time at PSU would end. This insight alone was helpful. But Colbert went on to talk about how people often don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving. He said that when he was a kid, he felt alone in his grief because no one would talk to him about it. All he wanted was for someone to acknowledge his experience. That would have made him feel less alone. Humans just want connection to other humans, especially about events that are important to them. I think this is the main thing that makes me cry when someone says something kind about my retirement from PSU. They are acknowledging my long years of experience at the university, which makes me feel … seen? Less alone? Appreciated? I’m not sure yet but the idea that the very act of acknowledging my experience is what makes me cry resonates. Colbert went on to say that our modern society has lost a lot of its rituals around grief. We no longer expect a surviving spouse to wear public displays of their grief for some set period of time, for example. Those rituals are mechanisms for public acknowledgement of the experiences of those who are grieving. Liz wrote movingly about the challenges of leaving the university at a time when the administration has ditched our traditions of acknowledging the contributions of those who are “retiring.” The lack of those rituals does make the leaving more difficult. Colbert then said that talking about grief, bringing it out into the open so that it isn’t “secret and weird,” is so important in transforming that grief into something we can live with, or even be grateful for. Cooper gave the example of his mother telling the story over and over and over of how his brother died, almost like a litany. This resonates with me as well. For example, at a New Year’s Eve party, my former colleagues and I talked about and dissected and analyzed situations and conversations from the last three years yet again. I remember thinking, even as I participated, that we were wallowing in the misery of what has happened. But Cooper and Colbert have reframed our discussions for me. We were working through our grief. We were connecting. We were acknowledging our shared experience. This will make us all feel less alone and allow us to perhaps get to the point where we are grateful for our grief.

I have been thinking about this podcast a lot since hearing it yesterday, I am grateful for my experiences at PSU. I’m working on being grateful for even the worst of them. For example, without the worst of them, I would probably not be retiring yet. And I am happy to be retired, looking forward to doing more of the things I love.