“I don't want to leave. I have worked here with so much love and enjoyment.” Mirjam Jahnke cannot say it often enough. And yet she is leaving her job as Safety & Security and Location Facility Manager. “I understand that I am so committed to TU/e that everything else comes second to it. If I want to play sport or am invited to a birthday party, the first thought that enters my mind is, 'Is this going to interfere with my work?'. If I were to stay, I would continue to spend this much time on my work, but I would run the risk of paying the price. There is more to life, outside the university. I am having to be uncompromising and draw a line under my career here in order to start experiencing that 'more'.”

This realization has been slowing growing over the past ten years. “My partner Annemarie and I have been wanting to live abroad and enjoy the outdoor life for quite some time now. At the end of 2009 we came across a house in the Dordogne that stole our hearts as soon as we saw it.” And that house in Saint-Nexans is where the couple will soon be living.”

A great deal of freedom

At TU/e she has had a great deal of freedom. “I have earned the trust to develop and set up business ventures. But that is different. The freedom I am talking about is something I experienced in the years that I used to sail. And no, it is not a question of having less responsibility. If it's your watch at night while everyone else is asleep, you're the one who has to get the ship safely through the Strait of Dover, or across the Bay of Biscay, or past a drilling platform or between the fishing boats in Hong Kong. But the feeling of being alone on the bridge under a full moon or as the sun sets...enjoying the air, the water and fish swimming all about you...That's what I am looking forward to, being more involved with nature, and more occupied with my immediate surroundings.”