The Saving Grace of Work--

Your family and their health, and yours, are primary. But after that, your work is your saving grace. It gives a focus to your life that allows you to resist the viscosity set up by the bureaucratic demands in a University, your students (you are their teacher, not likely their friend), and all the things you ought to get to.

Few of us are fortunate enough to have work that is so compelling, in itself, that it drives us. It is so deep, so connected to our inner being, we are driven to it. So you need to promise to give papers, to keep granting agencies happy, to do all the academic stuff that allows the world into your world.

Most advances in most fields depend on the efforts of the scholars in the field, and not only on the leading 2% of them. So it is not an insult to discover that you are not so compelled as you are professional and responsible. For that 2%, what the university must do is to make sure they can do their work.

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