And so begin the last few hours, of the months leading up to the final ritual of departure…
The walk across the icy path, the last cappuccino and pain au chocolat, the picture of the whiteboard that has been witness to the plans, aspirations and goals, of achievements and publications. At the end of today all that will remain from 16 years of service will be a clean whiteboard ready to receive the dreams of the next occupant(s), cardboard boxes filled with files and books, and the accumulated dust of the many years of life.
The place I leave behind is much different from the place I came to, all those years ago, with a head full of dreams, as well as fear and excitement of setting up my first group in a world class genomics Institute. Today what I leave behind is many broken dreams but also a much different culture and organisation. A sad one, a lost one.
A friend told me “a place can only be as good as its leadership”, never were there truer words. When an organisation loses its internal moral compass, when its arrogance lets it believe that it is above the law, when it believes the ends justify the means, so that it can act as it pleases so long as papers in elite journals continue to be produced, when all this is underwritten by those in power who become complicit then, people, lives and careers will continue to be fodder for the cannon…
Today, this is the place I leave behind.