Yesterday I gave up a teaching opportunity at a University. Today I feel really shit.
This blog is about those things, and some bigger things. Firstly I'm not (just) writing this to have a moan about just how awful I feel about things right now. I'm also doing it to highlight the nature of academia as a beast, both in the way it exploits people, and the way it affects people in that they end up feeling as if they should be exploited, or even guilty about not being exploited.
I say this of course in the broader sense of the exploitative nature of the beast. Not the lovely people who offered me the work, and did so as a means to help. It's not their fault this is the choice in the system, and they very much tried to make something good out of bad.
Anyway, disclaimers over. Here is what I contemplated taking:
Various hours (between 4-6 hours a day)
Mainly project supervision, some teaching.
Term time only (obviously, who gets anything else?)
At an institution 2.5 hours away (so a 5 hour round trip, and so often a 14 hour day).
All of which meant I'd have to take 2 days off other paid work (for prep/marking/exhaustion) and pay for petrol and/or stay over. (even if say £30 Travelodge, plus dinner and breakfast, that's £60 of wages. Plus petrol of around £20-25. That's £85). I put the sums out there because that's what people like me are doing all the time, paying to have a job. Having a job to support a job. And we've stopped thinking it's ridiculous.
Plus I'd be tied to this, rather than getting a proper job. Plus delaying my various other projects. And yet I said yet, until I couldn't any more. Because I felt I SHOULD want it. I did want it. But also because gift-horse aside, it's that sense you HAVE to go and be an academic should someone offer you the chance. No matter how wrong it might be for you, practically and personally.
And I made myself, after an afternoon of crying, say no.
Two types of people will read this. Those who, quite rightly look at that and say 'that is madness' and rightly so. It is. And yes others will look and say 'you would do it if you wanted it badly enough'.
And maybe they're right. And maybe that means two things:
1. Maybe I don't (and that's ok too)
2. That doesn't make it right.
This is far from a rarity. And I am expected to be grateful (again not by the people involved, by bigger perceptions) of this opportunity, no matter how possibly counter productive. No matter, honestly how bad it might even be health wise- exhaustion from the amount of travel and work. The mental health implications. And practically, to end up doing the equivalent of half a week or more's work for probably actually far less than the minimum wage I'd make at my Temp Job. But more that I- we would put ourselves through that. For the validation of being considered a 'real academic' again. Before it's (probably) taken away again.
And it makes me sad that I can't do it. That I don't have that in me any more. I don't have an ounce of fight left in me, to go through all that and be in no better state in a year. I looked at an academic job application yesterday and I knew. I knew I'd never have it in me again. And I should be relieved, but instead it breaks my heart.
Because while I have known for long enough that I'm not good enough to be an academic. Or equally that I don't have the privilege of hanging on long enough to have a shot at it. Because let's be real, far less capable people than me have 'made it' through sheer dumb luck, or more accurately being able to sustain this life of working for nothing for longer than I can. And I mean this sense of hanging on and being able to afford it both financially, which is the primary reason, but also mentally. I can't live feeling like my life is on hold because 'what if' I got a job, 'what if' something happened. I can't sustain another five years of waiting for my life to start.
But despite this, despite all this. Despite the number of times now I've had to 'quit' it still hurts, because the truth is about the short time I was 'inside' academia, I have never loved anything more. I was good at it (well the teaching at least) and I could have maybe, just maybe been good in a meaningful way. That doesn't mean I'm blind to the faults of the industry, before people jump in here to tell me I'm better off without. I know I am, in my rational mind I want my life, that's why I got out. But that doesn't mean it isn't hard to have to walk away again.
And it's fine. I've had a good cry writing this, and I'll be back to knowing walking away from academia was the best thing again in half an hour. It's only worse this time because life is frankly, just really shit right now.
(all things are relative, many people worse off than me in the world)
But a year of unemployment/temping. A slow (or fast) unravelling of various projects. And a general grinding down, not just this year, but all the ones before, has me really, really beaten right now.
And I'm sick of being stuck in a no man's land. Academia doesn't want me. But I keep going back because there feels like there's a sliver of hope. Because it feels like what I'm supposed to do.
Because I keep trying to transfer my skills elsewhere, and nobody wants to know. The amount of times, the amount of time I've spent trying to beat down doors, only to get told 'you're an academic go away' or to get a tiny bit of progress and have it whipped from under me. Usually by someone younger. And I'm past the point in my life where I can work entirely for free, but I am still willing to put the hours and graft in, if only someone would give me a chance. But I think I've reached the end of that road again too.
So what now? Well frankly that's a bloody good question. I clung to this academic offer, no matter how unfeasible, because, well I felt like nowhere else wants me maybe try that again. And people like me have to stop running back. Letting academia do this to us. Letting it break us down for years and years after we should be done. But us arts and humanities lot also need other professions to start taking us seriously, not slamming doors in our face for being 'an academic' when we're really trying to be anything but.
And on the off chance anyone can help, my CV is here: https://emilygarside.com/cv/
Oh and finally,
P.S
The next person who tells me I'm not a 'proper' playwright or should stick to writing books, will get a resounding fuck you. I'm a good writer. I'm a good playwright, critic and probably anything else I set my mind to (except poetry, I concede I am shit at that). You don't get to laugh at me, or dismiss me just because I've also been an academic. Show me a writer who has never had another career and I'll show you a liar. Or at the very list a person with a rich spouse or parents. I am sick of being dismissed.
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