3.00 Sabbaticals

Following six years of full-time service, faculty members are eligible to take sabbaticals for scholarly research and study. The faculty member will receive one, half-year leave at full salary, or a full-year leave at half salary.

(MIT budget management policy)

I started my research with looking through every paper on arxiv, which was related to the problem, which I wanted to solve. I was somewhat disappointed, because most of them appeared to be futile. But a few of those papers still contained original approaches, which intrigued me. So I started to sort out if I can develop any of those...

Meanwhile, I had some thoughts about my life in general. In particular, I thought about whether I should give up my work at the institute or not.

From one side, all this academical fuss started to annoy me... but from the other, I had only three months of work left before I could take a sabbatical year and then don't worry about down-to-earth problems as "what to eat" for that year anymore. So eventually I decided to be patient and to continue my work until I will be able to freely do what I really want. I continued to teach students throughout the day. But I also did my research at night, little by little.

At some point my colleagues started to notice that I had changed. I was asked why I became so sad, pale and detached. I was asked if I sleep enough... I was not going to explain them anything. I don't need their pity.