Life is about sequence. For 30 years I was a university president. Four years ago, when I left office at George Washington University, I became a professor there as well as a consultant for Korn/Ferry International, an executive-recruiting firm. Ever since then, people keep asking me how I like retirement. I am not retired. I am just no longer president. I’ve merely changed my major.
When my wife and I moved out of the president’s house and into a home of our own, we sent out change-of-address cards titled “Relocation and Reinvention.” We were moving, hence “relocation,” but daily activities were also changing, hence “reinvention.”
Needing a plan to guide my reinvention. I established a three-part arrangement. And I would advise those of you retiring from one job and rethinking your work life to do the same. It certainly helped me.
First, set up a financial plan, including, of course, securing continued health insurance and making choices about how to draw down pensions and savings. It’s crucial that you get honest, objective financial advice.
Next, devise a professional guide. You need to fill the day from breakfast to dinner. Once the daily routine of work has been disrupted, you need a framework, a tree rooted in the ground, upon which ornaments can be hung. For me the frame is teaching. The predictability—14-week terms and set times for class and student advising—gives me structure. I also consult part-time for Korn/Ferry, searching for college presidents, vice presidents, and deans for institutions around the world. And I continue to publish on a variety of subjects, mostly about higher education and leadership.
Finally, develop a personal plan to fill the remaining time when you are not engaged in structured professional endeavors. When one is a senior academic administrator, the days are about 18 hours long. Now I am home more regularly and prefer eating dinner at my kitchen table to almost any spread put out around town. In the old days, I wore a tuxedo twice a week. Now, when invited to a black-tie event, I come sporting a dark suit with black Mephistos on my feet. I’m more relaxed and less worried about how much money I’ve raised. I travel more. I sit on a foundation board that meets in Madrid twice a year, studying innovative ways to spur the economy, especially with the use of technology. I try to couple board meetings with a few extra vacation days. My children live far beyond the East Coast; both boys have baby sons, and my frequent-flier miles are accumulating on various airlines.
With my three-part plan established and running relatively smoothly, all is well, you may think. Yes and no. It’s about 80 percent fine; 20 percent needs refinement.
As crazy as the work hours were when I was president, as relentless as the pressure was, as all-consuming as the job was, I confess that I loved it, and I miss it. With a presidency comes a mission: to advance the cause and standing of a consequential institution wherever you go, with whomever you meet, at all times, in all venues. The job defines the direction of your life. It becomes who you are. I’d meet a new person and wonder which faculty members I might introduce her to, which students could serve as interns in her company, which fellowship could she endow, which new faculty chair could be established.
A university is an organic institution, growing, changing, continually in need of care and feeding. Being the head of a college is both an honor and a hoot; it is an awesome responsibility and a great deal of fun. At George Washington, I was responsible for thousands of employees and students—a huge payroll and a lot of tuition dollars. I increased the endowment, met with Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, and welcomed visiting dignitaries to the campus. That was the icing on the cake, or what I would describe as outside stuff.
Inside activities were equally fascinating and far more consequential. Faculty members are endlessly engaging. Students are a perpetual promise. The institutional mission is important. To quote James Madison, “Education is the true foundation of civil liberty.”
So the job was fun, important, and gave me gray hair. I worked at it with a zeal that is hard to describe. Being a university president is like running a marathon that never ends. Until one day it does. It was time for it to end—time for me, and time for the university. Nineteen years is a long run.
My send-off gave me a high, as I was feted all over town, toasted, roasted, and given mementos. People were very kind. The university raised significant dollars, established a chair for me, named a school after me (the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration). Members of Congress entered complimentary words about me in the Congressional Record, a few of which were even true. My wife and I moved into the new house and went on vacation for five weeks. All was good with the world in the summer of 2007.
By week six of my “retirement,” the clouds began to form. I missed the action. I was out of my groove, and that was an uncomfortable feeling. Yes, people still called and wanted to have lunch with me. Other presidents sought out my advice. Students flocked to my class. But it wasn’t the same. The seat of power was gone, and someone else was sitting 10 rows up at half-court. The old challenges and points of satisfaction were missing. For a time, I lost my point of focus.
It took me a year to develop a positive vocabulary—to begin to see things in a new light. It was OK to leave the house at 9 a.m., not at 7:30 a.m. Dinner at home was a renewed pleasure. My wife is still trying to get me to take Fridays off, but somehow I can’t seem to manage that; my DNA requires a five-day-a-week routine. And some habits are hard to break. I still surround myself with clutter, take-aways from events. Menus, programs, badges, pictures, plaques, and piles of books and memos cover my desk—all evidence of my newly engaged life as a teacher and writer.
When I was a dean at Boston University, in the 1970s, I came to know a senior professor who had a distinguished career as an art historian. One day he described an energetic junior faculty member who worked in various areas of study and flitted in and out of his office all through the day, as “a series of flashing lights rather than a steady glow.”
In the early days of my post-presidency, that is how I sometimes felt. Life was a series of flashing lights, some of them bright and strong, but the days of a steady glow, when I managed a complex organization, seemed to be behind me, at least for a while.
Until I found my groove again.
The structure of my new faculty life was more difficult to devise than the old administrative job. My work is defined more by silos than before: teaching, consulting, and writing seem less interconnected than was the presidency, where the university was one major platform, a central concept with many moving parts.
On the plus side of my new life order, I find the reduction in stress to be healthful: I eat better and exercise more. I traded three secretaries who took dictation—they were the last of their kind—for a MacBook Air laptop and a BlackBerry. I’m in charge of my own communications. I read more for fun and less for professional obligation. And, after many years of careful attention to every word I uttered in public or private conversations, my First Amendment rights have finally been restored.
Today I am viewed by some as a gray eminence and asked for advice regularly, a rather nice situation. I am old enough to witness the realization of ideas I had 30 years go—ideas that at the time were considered revolutionary and now have become accepted as matters evolutionary. I am mature enough to understand that the next generation is eager to move up the ladder.
On the negative side, growing older is not as much fun as advertised. Some friends are sick, and some have died.
Some people on the campus still call me, “Mr. President,” but many shout across the street, “Hey, Steve!” I enjoy sitting in front of the library and watching students come and go. I tried belonging to Facebook but couldn’t keep up with all the alumni who wanted to be my friend; my in box became cluttered with other people’s information.
I’ve developed a rhythm and a pace to my new life. I still glad-hand with people I meet on the campus, and I’m as inquisitive as ever about what’s happening in higher education.
I spent over four decades as a senior administrator on three campuses, and by my estimation I’ve attended nearly 70 graduation exercises. Four years ago, it was time to leave the presidency, time to hang up the cap and gown, time to stop marching behind the marshal with the mace.
Life now has become more normal and less ceremonial.
Recently, at a Washington affair, I ran into an old friend. He put his arm around my shoulder and said with a smile, “Hello. Weren’t you once Steve Trachtenberg?” I’m here to report that I’m still Steve Trachtenberg, but today I wear a Washington Nationals baseball cap instead of a mortarboard.
