Where I go
One thing I’ve always liked about teaching at a university is how the campus itself feels much more slower paced. Everyone, from professors to students, seem more willing to leave space for expanding and dwelling. As exciting as the beginning of every academic year is, there’s something to be said about walking around the campus grounds and feeling as if the air is a little more buoyant. Light and fluffy. It’s given me time to reflect on the past year, my professional and lived experience, and how this particular academic year (and a bit more) has exacted a toll.
For some of you who already see me shitpost on my Facebook page, you may already know this, but I ended this academic year with a whimper. I’d spent the past year semi-openly applying for jobs outside of academia. At the end of last year, I had done a soft search on the academic job market and was even a finalist for a job. At the same time as I was prepping materials for this job, I was also putting together my promotion packet at my current job. So basically my days were saddled with digging through student evals, observations, letters of recommendation, powerpoint slides, diversity statements, research plans, etc. Additionally, I had been a member of 3 campus councils as well as two tri-campus councils. I didn’t get the other job, but I had to switch gears back to promotion so quickly that I didn’t have time to really give it any thought. After submitting my promotion packet in May of 2023, I basically had to sit back and play the wait game until getting a formal announcement (fun fact about higher-ed: if promoted, it wouldn’t go into effect until autumn of 2024)…or so I assumed.
At the end of that summer, we found out that we were pregnant. My wife and I had been trying for years and were ecstatic at the idea of becoming parents. I told my family, a few friends, and we were excited. The autumn quarter came along and things began to shift—I’d been notified that there were some minor issues with my packet that needed attending to, so I went ahead and fixed them. It wasn’t a big deal and was something that wasn’t too time consuming. Then, unfortunately, we found out that we were no longer pregnant and thus began a quick spiral; weeks later another request for changes, mourning the miscarriage, getting COVID, all within a couple of months. In November, yet another request for changes and now I’m getting frustrated with my situation. I fix them, submit, and move on with my life.
I was extremely unhappy with how things were playing out and so, during this time, I’d started talking to a career transition coach, paid for a resume service, and began applying for any job that seemed remotely in my wheelhouse. I didn’t need academia…I didn’t need any of this bullshit. Christmas passes and we arrive at winter quarter; at this point I’ve applied to about 40 jobs or so and heard nothing. Then, in the middle of January (two weeks before my birthday), I get one last email to make some changes to my packet (that I had to get done basically overnight). I got that email right before leaving campus, having taught two back-to-back classes, and drove home. When I got there, I started telling my wife what happened and I just…broke down. All this work…no, all of this labor and for what? A measly 10% raise. While this was happening, our school had been in the process of hiring two new writing instructors and because of my administrative position, I would be fielded questions from people (despite not being on the hiring committee). This is when things began to get dark—I’m seeing unsolicited cv’s from people who teach music, history, and business. Mind you, we were looking for writing instructors and it all felt so desperate. And while that was going on, radio silence from industry in regards to the growing number of applications I was submitting. I’m looking at what’s happening in the academic job market as well as in the private sector and everything was seemingly hopeless.
What the fuck are we doing this for?
Why does it feel like we’re all fighting for table scraps?
Why do I feel dirty when looking at these emails from desperate academics?
Spring quarter came along and I was completely disconnected: meetings were passing by in a blur. What were once lively and engaging conversations were now a constant murmur that wasn’t going over my head so much as hitting the brick wall that was my brain. I know for a fact that my work was suffering for it, so when it came time for our faculty to vote for my admin replacement (a rotating position that lasts three years), I didn’t even consider the possibility of trying to extend my role. It’s for the best anyway. I’m sure everyone can see how shitty a job I’m doing so they’ll be glad to have someone else in my stead. I had only one class to teach that quarter and yet, by the end of it, I’d barely managed to limp over the finish line. During this time, I was notified that my promotion had finally been approved and I felt…nothing. I didn’t feel accomplished or proud and I shared the news with my wife in a kind of “oh yeah, this inconsequential thing happened that I needlessly put a lot of work into, so anyway…”.
But my wife did something that I didn’t expect: she stopped me in my tracks and said, “you know, this is something you should be proud of. It was a lot of work and you should celebrate it.” Her words pierced through this fog of apathy I’d been stumbling through, forcing me to reflect on everything that’d happened; I’d spent the past year unmoored, floating through a wide sea of disappointment and heartache and I was desperate for anything that I could even remotely pass off as a life preserver. Hell, I’d even finished the first draft of my manuscript for my novel and just…moved on. I hadn’t really been working on the revisions and hadn’t even been writing in general. Nothing was satisfying and everything was dull. Rusted.
Looking back on it, I realized that I was depressed. I started back up with my therapist who, sure enough, confirmed my suspicions. Weekly sessions. Thinking through what I had been feeling, or, what I had allowed myself to feel. Whether due to toxic masculinity, inexperience with healthy coping skills, or a midlife crisis, when viewed objectively, I wasn’t just depressed, I’d been suffering in silence. Pushing through because what the fuck else are you gonna do? During one session, my therapist asked about my book and I talked about my progress or lack thereof, and he posed an interesting question:
Do you see a world where you can be happy where you are?
Those weren’t his exact words, but that’s how I interpreted his question. Then we started looking into how I was viewing writing and what I might do differently. Printing the damn thing, the big, bad manuscript, in all of its glory and breaking up my process into chunks…maybe that could kick start this…
Recently, during a writing session, I was thinking about how to describe scenes in my writing and I thought about maybe taking some pictures to reference during my writing. That led me down a rabbit hole of film photography and purchasing a used Canon and some 35mm film stock. I started snapping pics of just shit that I thought looked cool: the small cinema near our apartment that we really like, some of the flora and fauna common here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and many more of our dogs. Hell, it’s even propelled me to start hiking more with my wife, as it’s a built in excuse to take more pics and buy more film stock. I noticed that, while all of this was happening, I was writing more; not just novel related, but going back to academic research and writing about things I’d been wanting to write about for a long time and just…lost. I also started work on another novel, one that I’m really excited about. At first I felt like some sort of poser schlub who is just picking up a camera as a way to be some pretentious asshole—that’s the kind of cognitive distortion my brain automatically does when I start down a new path. Hell, I even felt it when I started writing my novel: you’re not a WRITER, writer. That’s for people who know what the fuck they’re doing. Yours is more about abstract, disconnected artifacts that make definitions. But I’ve begun pushing back on that and accepting that these things I’m doing are indeed connected in multiple ways. Most importantly, they’re allowing me to create—and here I’m pausing because I don’t want to say the word I’m gonna say because I feel like I’m making it bigger than it is, but I’m gonna say it anyway—art. Creating. Art.
Art is the thing that you need when you’re desperate for meaning. That’s the buoy I was looking for: not a complete and total life shift or abandonment of what I know, but a separate thing that lets me build and make and in ways that are imperfect. Who gives a shit if its good or if other people don’t like it, just make the thing. Make it ugly. Make it pretty. But just fucking make it. These things are saving my life now and especially in a moment where the whole WORLD feels pretty fucked, they are not trifling, piddling things. They are a life preserver.
