Leaving Harvard
It’s a sunny day in Cambridge, and for the first time my sweat plasters my shirt to my back. It is summer, finally, and all the neighborhood haunts are pleasantly empty. As I walk through Harvard Yard, I pass dozens of beautiful little sights, wondering how long it will be until I see them again.
I am leaving academia, literally leaving a place where ivy grows on pretty brick towers. I have learned an amazing amount here at Harvard. More than anything, it is a place where brilliant but highly stressed people enjoy the ultimate luxury, just stopping to think. Universities, more than almost any other part of our society, have faith in the power of the human mind to achieve something through rational effort. Veritas.
I feel a bit of sadness on leaving, for while my research has gone well, it hasn’t resulted in a high-profile publication. That is, all the results will be published, but perhaps not in exactly the manner I’d first dreamed of. It is an odd thing, to write a scientific paper or essay, for one gets so involved that one loses all sense of objectivity. They are my babies, these papers, my intellectual babies. I think the ideas in them are important, but what do I know? In science, one must ultimately wait for the judgment of the field, which takes several decades to arrive. It is a humbling but pleasant thing to wait.
Maybe this same feeling of waiting is true for real children as well. Parents do the best job they can raising their children, and then wait to see how the child turns out. Even the best intentioned parent can’t control everything, and to some extent you just have to wait to see how your child’s personality shapes up.
