Zombie work

When finishing is wandering gray-scale days.

Part 8 in this series.

There’s something uniquely painful about running out the string as a full-time professor who knows they’re being pushed out the door at the end of the term months before that final push comes.

For clarity, I was informed I was losing my job at the beginning of February, meaning I had to teach through early May before doing the work of clearing out of my office and former life. (link to 2nd post here)

A caveat: I am aware there is a level of privilege in having a contract the school must honor for several months after laying a person off. No immediate stop. No last check slid across the table in the awkward minutes surrounding the news. A bit of a cushion in terms of time to look for a new job. 

These are all good things. And yet…

Being a professor—one who’s engaged and actually good at what they do—is more demanding than people think. I routinely worked 50-60 hours a week during the school year and that didn’t change my last term in the classroom.

What did change is how every day felt.

If you’re at all good at your job, people won’t understand why you were let go. And because they don’t understand, it makes talking to you awkward for them. They don’t want to cause you pain, nor think about the prospects of their own position being eliminated.

And then there are your students. I was committed to giving them the same quality instruction and attention I tried to bring to every class I designed and taught. The cognitive dissonance of that effort during my last term was exhausting.

Add to that the process of students finding out—typically one or two at a time—and then wanting to process their feelings about my dismissal with me. Rinse and repeat every few days for the three months I had left of the term.

Listen, I loved my students and my colleagues. More on that in my next post.

But the long pause before leaving was exhausting. I hope not to do that again.