Thoughts on culture, education, and having been a Canadian in the US
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Professor Gutman goes to Washington

An inspiring article on my colleague Huck Gutman in UVM’s The View today. I miss his enthusiasm around the department these days… Like my Dad, Huck’s too busy having fun to even dream of “retirement.” That’s a great lesson for all of us.

Gutman has altruistic goals for his work in Washington, to be sure — “I love the sense that we might actually change the world” for the better, he says — but more personal forces are also at work. While many of the colleagues he began teaching with are winding down, Gutman is not remotely ready for retirement.

“This is a chance to grow, to move onward with your life,” he says. With any luck, he’ll return to teaching in a year or two “more vibrant, with a renewed sense of how wonderful” being a college professor can be. To make his point, he paraphrases a favorite line from Normal Mailer: “A law of life is that we all have to grow or pay more for staying the same.”