S3. My Post-Work Life

I resigned from my full professor job in 2002 and life became more playful and productive.

Dear friends,

In Letter S2, where I summarized readers’ responses to my survey question about what they would do if they had more time, I mentioned that I was tempted to say something about a change I made a bit more than two decades ago to turn essentially all of my remaining life into play. I have always had mixed feelings about bringing my own experiences into my writing. On the one hand, like many who have been on the planet longer than the average person, I like to think my experiences may be interesting, possibly even useful, to others. On the other hand, a voice inside me says, “Hey, Peter, that’s pretty egocentric; talk about research not yourself!” I also realize this is going to come across as boasting, and it probably is that.

For better or worse, for this letter I’ve chosen to ignore that voice of reason and humility and say a bit about my own experiences. My excuse is that several readers, in comments to Letter S2, urged me to tell my story. Of course I knew some would do that, and if they hadn’t I probably would have found another excuse. One reader teasingly wrote, “Come on, Peter, you know you’re going to tell us how the 21-year-ago shift happened! … Countdown to the post…. 10…9…8…”  OK, Natasha, we’ve reached 0.

My Decision to Resign from My Full Professorship

In August of 2002, when I was 58 years old, I resigned from my position as full professor at Boston College, well before retirement age (which for professors is typically sometime after 70). I had been a professor in the Department of Psychology (now Psychology and Neuroscience) already for 30 years, researching, teaching, and administering (I was department chair for a while). When I resigned, I didn’t separate from the university completely. I accepted the Dean’s offer of an unpaid but official position as Research Professor. It involved no obligations on my part, but I could continue to use some of the university’s research supports and, in return, I would continue to note my Boston College affiliation on academic publications.

I resigned for several reasons. One had to do with teaching. I always liked working with students on individual or small-group projects. I also liked engaging students in discussions in small classes. And, I admit, I liked being on stage lecturing to very large classes. But I hated the fact that many students were there only because they believed they had to be, and I hated grading papers and exams and assigning grades to students at the end of each semester. As I became increasingly engaged in research into Self-Directed Education (democratic schooling and unschooling), I began, increasingly, to doubt the value of teaching under the constraints of the typical university. Teaching takes a lot of time and effort, and if you are not sure it is a good thing, it begins to feel burdensome.

Another reason I resigned is because, financially, I could. Early in my career, when I was regularly teaching the introductory psychology course, I couldn’t find any textbooks I liked. They all seemed insulting to students’ intelligence. They treated psychology as if it were a collection of facts, names, and definitions to memorize. They did not encourage critical thinking. To me, psychology is a set of interesting ideas to think about, challenge, delimit, expand upon, and in other ways discuss, but I found no books that presented the field that way. Also, I came to psychology with a background in biology, steeped in evolutionary thinking, so I wanted to bring Darwinian insights into the discussion of ideas in psychology. At the time, there were no introductions to psychology that did any of this. So, I decided to write my own. At first, I did this just for my own course, distributing copies of my typed drafts to my students, but then a major publishing company expressed interest in publishing it. The book turned out to be a success through multiple editions. My royalties for some years were more than my Boston College salary and I put most of that into retirement savings, so I no longer needed the salary.

But the main reason I resigned had to do with my recognition that life does not go on forever and, for the rest of it, I should, to the degree possible, do what I want to do unencumbered by demands of employment. My first wife, with whom I had been married for 30 years, had died of a chronic disease in 1997. One of my sisters and my mother had died a few years before that. My son was well into adulthood. My life was in flux. I made the decision to resign in 1998 but executed it in steps—cutting to half time before cutting completely in 2002.

During those half-time years I fell in love with a wonderful, divorced woman who had two young children and we decided to marry, which we did in 2002. That, too, was part of a transition to a new phase of life. She was an ob/gyn with a very full work schedule and I would, among other things, now be a stay-at-home stepdad for a few years (the kids were 9 and 13 in 2002), which I found to be not at all burdensome. The years since 2002 have been the happiest of my life, and each year seems to be happier than the previous one. Pretty much every day I wake up thinking, “Today I will do exactly what I want to do.” I’ll be 80 in March of this year.

So, What Do I Do?

I have always been an outdoor person. As a kid I’m sure I spent much more time outdoors—fishing, swimming, bicycling, playing pick-up baseball and other sports, skating on frozen ponds, delivering newspapers, mowing lawns, and doing generally all that kids used to do—than I spent in school. In a very real sense, the outdoors was my school. Beginning at age 16 I worked for four summers as a lifeguard and camp waterfront director. Throughout my adult years, even before resigning from my professorship, I continued to spend as much time as I reasonably could outdoors. I have always (since 1972) had a vegetable garden. Rather than drive to work, I commuted by bicycle. For most years that was 17 miles each way. I started doing that during the 1973 oil crisis, when there were long lines at gas stations, but found I enjoyed it so much that I continued it for the rest of my work career.

Now, free from work, I’m spending almost as much time outdoors as I did as a kid. My vegetable garden has grown much larger; I’ve added a small orchard; I collect and cut my own firewood for our wood stove; I take a bicycle ride of 10 to 20 miles just for fun most days and continue to use my bike rather than car for such things as grocery shopping (I have a cart that attaches to the bike); I cross-country ski in wooded areas near my home when we have enough snow (which sadly has become less frequent with global warming); and my wife and I spend many pleasant hours in our tandem kayak on the river near our home or walking together in nearby woods observing wildlife. [Here I am with my pole beans, summer of 2021.]

Without the obligations of teaching and administrative duties and able to follow my own interests unencumbered, my research and writing career has bloomed as it never did before. Since resigning my professorship, I wrote the book Free to Learn (now translated into 18 languages); published 230 essays on a blog for Psychology Today; conducted much empirical research into play and children’s natural ways of learning; published 67 academic articles or book contributions; helped to found two nonprofit organizations (the Alliance for Self-Directed Education and Let Grow); been interviewed for countless  podcasts and radio or television programs; given countless conference presentations and other invited talks; and started this series of substack letters. That’s much more, in slightly over two decades, than I had accomplished in three decades as a paid professor.

And all of this has been play. It’s play because it is completely optional. It is what I have chosen to do and want to do. I have complete control over it. It is intrinsically motivated. When I realized I did not have to work for a living I began doing my best “work,” because it was no longer work in the sense of toil. I felt and continue to feel no compulsion about it. A mind freed is a better mind than one constrained.

I think what I am describing is not just about me. I think we are all at our best when we are playing. Play Makes Us Human. It makes us better humans.

Final Thought

OK, enough about me. Thank you for your indulgence. In my next letter I’ll get back to business. I plan to return, temporarily, to the line of ideas and research discussed in my D series of letters. More specifically, I’ll tell you about a new worldwide research study that lends further credence to my contention (in Letters D6 and D7) that smart phones and social media are not major causes of the recent rise in anxiety, depression, and suicide in young people.

Your comments, whether or not you agree with me, and your questions, whether or not I have good answers, are always welcome in these letters. They add to the letter’s value for other readers as well as me.

If you are not already a subscriber, please subscribe now. If you can afford it, I very much appreciate paid subscriptions (just $50 a year). I contribute all profits from paid subscriptions to nonprofit organizations that are designed to bring more freedom and play to young people. If you are curious, the profits from paid subscriptions during 2023 have gone to Let Grow, the Alliance for Self-Directed Education, the Alternative Education Resource Organization, Defending the Early Years, and the National Institute for Play.

With best wishes for a play-filled 2024.

Peter