Milestone anniversary
Soon I will host a champagne toast in honour of our employees who have given 25 or 40 years of service. These are the happy days in the life of an administrator, you see. It has only been since last year that we’ve been able to honour people who have served 40 years. That’s extra special when you know that our university will celebrate its 40th anniversary only in 2016. These people are the true pioneers of UM. They jumped into the deep end and are still swimming around forty years later. I just calculated how many hours of their lives they have spent so far at this university. Assuming a 38-hour week and 8 weeks of holidays per year, this amounts to 66,880 hours. That gave me a moment’s pause.
It also got me thinking about my own career so far. The longest time I’ve worked anywhere is 14 years, at the Freie Universität Berlin. I didn’t do the same thing all 14 years; my jobs ranged from professor to faculty council member and institute director to faculty dean. And I think that’s also the case for many of those to whom I raise my glass in celebration of this milestone anniversary on 10 November. Doing the same thing for 40 years, no matter how challenging or interesting the job is, is not for many people. And that’s the beauty of a large organisation like a university. The feeling of ‘it’s time for something different’ can very often be answered within the organisation itself. Though such a milestone probably has more to do with loyalty and the personal development of employees, I’m also a little proud that this organisation has managed to captivate people for so long. To their and our health!
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