Week 12: Handover

The last skill, and the one almost nobody practises — leaving a volunteer role without taking the institution's memory with you

24 May 2027

Most volunteers do not resign. They get busy, then they get tired, then they stop opening the tab, and eighteen months later somebody notices that the AutoModerator config has a rule nobody can explain and the only person who knew why it was added has not logged in since March.

Institutional memory in these projects lives in individual heads and in archives that are technically public and practically unsearchable. When a long-serving contributor leaves quietly, the project does not lose their labour — someone else will do the removals. It loses the reasons.

So the final piece of work is a handover. Write down what you did, what you decided, what you decided against and why, which rules exist because of a specific incident, who to ask, and what you would do next if you were staying. It is the least satisfying document you will produce all semester and the only one that outlives you.

The School of Invented Disciplines requires it under the Continuity of Service policy, which was drafted, in the spirit of the thing, by somebody who has since left the School and cannot be reached for comment.

Outline#

• attrition without resignation, and what it costs
• what a handover note contains — and the rule-rationale register
• succession: recruiting before you need to, not after
• the course’s own handover: the sandbox passes to next year’s cohort
• what you owe a community you are leaving