Princeton and Windsor

I work at the University of Windsor. To take this position I left a similar one at Princeton. Windsor is an aggressively mediocre, semi-industrial Canadian institution, while Princeton is, well, Princeton. This simple fact seems to bother some. Why did you come here, they ask, why did you leave there. Unspoken: what's wrong with you? Were you fired?

I give easy answers: nearer my family (slightly), higher level position, the old challenges thing. True enough, or semi-true. It was one of those complicated dances of family and husband and restlessness and opportunity, and not really worth going on about. But the apparent assumption that one would have to be insane to leave a high-end institution for a low one does bother me.

Working for a prestigious institution can be gratifying. It's flattering to get the job offer, and I was a little in awe my first while there - the history, the beauty of the campus, the feeling of brilliant minds past and present all around me. By the time a few months had passed, though, it was just a place to work, just a job. The beautiful town came with a very high cost of living, financing for the equipment my area needed was often unobtainable despite Princeton's unimaginable wealth, and the brilliant minds didn't really have much to do with me, though I attended a few talks.

The students were almost uniformly bright, but I also found them often frighteningly passive and, well, uniform. But that's another rant.