Lada Adamic is an assistant professor in the School of Information and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, at the University of Michigan, with a courtesy appointment in EECS to boot. Her research interests center on information dynamics in networks: how information diffuses, how it can be found, and how it influences the evolution of a network’s structure. She worked previously in Hewlett-Packard’s Information Dynamics Lab. Her projects have included identifying expertise in online question answer forums, studying the dynamics of viral marketing, and characterizing the structure in blogs and other online communities.
Lada, I know that you and I did not know each other well, but a friend just sent me a link to your two posts about retirement.
I loved them so much!
They ring so true to my own experience. I especially liked the way you described the pluses and minuses of status loss.
When you and I knew each other, status was very important to me. But as I grew more frustrated with both Facebook and academia, I began to question the role of status in my own life. I experienced a full-blown mid-life crisis. I severed ties with Facebook, withdrew from my life in academia, and set out to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail :
https://jimmyjamhikingclub.com/2021/02/11/why/
But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I was just quitting one “impressive” thing for another “impressive” thing. It was still status-seeking.
It took me 800 miles to finally come to terms with this. I quit the PCT and went home and initiated a plan to leave my work life.
I am technically still employed in academia, but I have essentially been quasi-retired since then, using up sabbatical credits and course releases at the end of my career that I never took when things were fast and furious.
As I have ceased both teaching and research, my own status has dwindled away and for that I feel both sad and elated.
I worry that I should be doing something big to save humanity and at the same time I feel relieved that people no longer recognize me.
But I have also found that both of these feelings have declined with time.
More and more, I just feel content.
I still experience self-questioning about my departure from work life, but it feels more abstract. What is real is my own aesthetic experience with Nature and the small difference I make in the lives of my friends, family, and neighbors.
Lada, I always admired you in your work life, but thanks to these two lovely posts of yours, I feel even more admiration for you in your post-work life.
I’m glad you are getting to swim and explore and spend time with people you love.
It is enough.
Best,
james
James, I think you expressed things better in your comment than I did in those two long blog posts! I remember wondering what you were up to, but not reaching out. Maybe if I had I would have been wiser sooner. Or maybe it takes making the journey (on the PCT or elsewhere) on one’s own. I really appreciate your insights and the experience you’ve shared. Your post about why the PCT through-hike is powerful. Thank you.
Hi Lada…not sure if you remember but we met at Meta a few times and even schemed on some potential collaborations, none of which came to be. But I was a huge admirer of yours while I was there and partly because of just how much I appreciate this blog, I think an even bigger admirer now. It’s such a joyful & wonderful & brilliant little corner of the internet and I’m always so grateful whenever I come here and spend a little time. Thank you so much for sharing it and hope we run into each other at some point.
Hi Brandon, of course I remember. Those would have been fun, broadly-useful, and insight-yielding projects, and I’m really sorry we didn’t get to work on them together. I greatly admire your drive for transparency and ability to not just speak eloquently about it, but make it (and design-related side projects) happen too.