This fall will be the third straight year that the academic year has started without me. I thought I would miss academia terribly when I left, but the fact is that I don't miss it at all. In fact, I feel like someone who escaped from East Germany in the 1980s, looking back at that big wall I climbed over and wondering how I ever was satisfied on the other side and thinking about my family and friends who are still trapped there and don't know that there is a better life on the other side.
None of the things that I once worried about (missing the teaching, not having enough intellectual stimulation, not being able to find compatible people to interact with) came about. If I had known it was going to be this easy I would have left long before I did but one should never underestimate the power of fear and intertia.
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