Thread by @jaxwendy

Some news: I found out last week that my last, best chance for a tenure-track job this year has evaporated. I cannot renew my contract at my current institution, and I’ve decided not to apply to visiting positions. This is quite likely my last year as a professor.

After spending 4 years in contingent positions on 1-year contracts, and 5 years on the academic job market altogether—some years as a finalist for TT positions, some years without interviews—I am exhausted in every way that you might imagine.

I thought about writing something very long and very angry, listing my accomplishments, spamming twitter with my CV and student evals, doing a million things that will ultimately have no effect but might make me feel better, in my righteous rage, for a little while.

But for now, I’ll just say this: my job has meant everything to me, and I am devastated by the fact that there is not a permanent place for me, for most scholars of my generation, in academia. You all know the statistics; I will not repeat them.

I hope I can find a career important to me as this one has been. I might go back into publishing and move somewhere interesting for the right job; I might just move back to LA and see what kind of life I can make for myself there, with my dog Millie and avocados.

I am happy to feel some sense of agency over my life again; I cry every time I think that this might be my last time teaching poetry to rooms of beautiful young people.

When I wrote this essay this time last year, it felt like the beginning of the end, and now I see that it was.

blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/real-to…