June 17, 2025

Dr. Rue: Ah, Dave, good to see you. I worried you might not show up today.

Dave: Huh?  What does that mean?

Dr. Rue: Your Facebook post suggesting that "Splendid Isolation" is your retirement theme song, so to speak.

Dave: Oh, that. It was mostly a joke.

Dr. Rue: You should know that in therapist circles, there are fewer flags redder than "it was mostly a joke."

Dave: Well, I did generally mean it.

Dr. Rue: We should look at this in more depth, as it seems integral to your perception of a happy retirement. I had never heard that song before, so I listened a couple of times, taking notes.  A pretty bleak song, don't you think?

Dave: That's just Warren Zevon. Bleakness and humor all rolled up in one. The unstated joke of my posting was that I could've ended up needing "Lawyers, Guns and Money" in retirement.

Dr. Rue: Nevertheless, "splendid isolation, I don't need no one." Not sure I see much humor there.

Dave: But, later he wants to be like Michael Jackson, alone in Disneyland, asking "Goofy, take my hand."  Hilarious.

Dr. Rue: Maybe, but that gets lost in the {checks notes} "don't want nobody coming by without calling first. Don't want nothing to do with you," and then the "don't want to see their faces, and I don't want to hear them scream." {lengthy pause} You do know your John Donne, right?

Dave: Of course. "No man is an island," blah, blah, blah, but I can dream, can't I? As I once wrote in a poem, man is more of an isthmus than a stupid island. I can't cut myself completely off from the world, but as Zevon sings, it's something to fantasize about.

Dr. Rue: O.k., you do see why this is so troubling, given your career?

Dave: What do you mean?

Dr. Rue: Choosing to be a Provost, frankly even just choosing to be a teacher, is a strange way to seek isolationism.

Dave: Ah, that is very true, Sal. However, it is because of my career that I crave isolationism away from it.

Dr. Rue: Elaborate.

Dave: The demands on me, certainly the last part of my career, felt overwhelming. On any given day, I could expect some or all of the following requests of my time, and ultimately my authority: someone in enrollment begging me to authorize another section of a course opened, even though I knew my dean would have no one available to teach it; a high school partner wanting to know why I allowed a certain faculty member to teach their students; a dean needing me to convince HR to change a recruitment process to facilitate a quick hire; a president wanting to know why pass rates in a certain program weren't at a certain level; a student demanding a grade changed; a coach looking for me to resolve a personality conflict between a student-athlete and his (or her, although who am I kidding, it was always the male athletes) faculty member; a faculty member seeking my authorization of an additional class beyond the contract; a department chair requesting me to allow an adjunct to teach an online section, even though the adjunct wasn't trained; an advisor asking for a course override for a student because the applicable dean was on vacation; a vice-president needing an explanation for . . .

Dr. Rue: Alright, alright. I get it. Yours was a demanding job. You had a lot of fires to put out. You do realize that's part of what justifies such a high-level position.

Dave: You would think so, doc, but lesser minds have certainly thought a college could do without a chief academic officer.

Dr. Rue: You're kidding, right? {Long pause} O.k, I guess not. Back to the specific scenario: you could control the flow of all intrusion, right? You had an administrative assistant who screened for you?

Dave: Yes, but my philosophy was that if I was to do the job well, I had to provide complete access. Some of my deans urged me to adopt a STFD attitude, but I rarely did that.

Dr. Rue: Do I dare ask what the acronym means?

Dave: Well, it involves shutting the door, if that helps.

Dr. Rue: Ah. Nevertheless, all of this still begs the question: Why is all of this trickling over to retirement? Isn't that the best closed door environment, you choosing when to open and when not to open?

Dave: Why should I even have a door in retirement, Sal? You'd be amazed at how quickly people stop dropping by. Sure, the first week or two after I retired, a decent number of people reached out, but a lot didn't. I guess I quickly realized how I was something to be used in my role, not necessarily used in the worst sense of the word, but just that for most colleagues Dave Fleming was a conduit to getting what they wanted.

Dr. Rue: And knowing that now hurts?

Dave: To be honest, yes. When I left Davenport in a similar kind of exit (I was there one day, gone the next), the scuttlebutt was that I was perceived to play favorites with "friends," a charge I would strongly disavow . . . if I had been given any chance to defend myself.  As a result, once I got the SMC position, I guarded myself more from that potential charge, with the effect that my greatest retirement "friends" are fellow retirees. That's all good and fun in itself, but they saw retirement coming and almost certainly mentally prepared for it; I, on the other hand, left work on a Thursday afternoon and by mid-day that Friday, I found myself (at least technically, if not mentally) retired. It's not like I got the "pick-a-tacky-gift-as-a-sign-of-our-gratitude" catalog.

Dr. Rue: I'm glad you're not bitter. More significantly, though, sounds like you left some things unresolved back there in the office.

Dave: God, I hope not. I left enough other crap back there. My administrative assistant is probably still cleaning out that office.

Dr. Rue: Now don't make a joke about this, Goofy. 

Dave: Fine. Yes, I have some unresolved issues.

Dr. Rue: What are we going to do about that?

Dave: Listen to more Zevon? 

Dr. Rue: Now, Dave, stop deflecting.

Dave: What can I say, I'm "Mr. Bad Example." See you next time.

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The Full-Evolving Full Series of Sessions

Session Four: In The Consulting Room