It’s complicated

I took a stand-up paddle board class a couple weeks ago at Lake Griffy. The skies have been hazy for a few weeks now from the smoke and fires in Canada. The water was glassy and still. Although the morning had started out cool, we had our sweatshirts off by the time our class approached the docks a little before 9am. Cliff swallows peered down at us as we paddled under the bridge, kingfishers swooshed through the leafy branches by the lake edges, and a blue heron slowly and silently swooped in over us. 

A friend had invited me to go with her, and I thought, how hard can it be that there’s a class for this? It’s f*ing hard, people. Objectively speaking. This is a yoga-on-expert-level core workout. And then trying to learn to balance with a new foot was a whole other universe of core engagement. I did it, though. I was able to stand up several times and paddle. And I did not fall in, though I almost capsized when I tried to pay attention to the grip of my toes on the board. 

During one of “try out this new skill” SUP breakouts, another participant and I were trying to make a flotilla from our boards. “Do you work for IU?” he asked. “I just left IU a month ago,” I replied. “Congratudolences?”

What happened?

The short version of the story is that I left IU on May 5 after working there for 18 years. I left without another job lined up and I am currently not employed full-time by an academic institution. I did the thing we don’t speak of but many of us dream about – I left. I am, however, working on some contracted projects on grad development and teaching a course design series to grads and postdocs this summer. I’m exploring employment where I can continue working in graduate student development, taking it to the level of inter-institutional collaborations, networks, and organizations. 

Many people ask me why I left and I wonder why they ask me. Are they gossip folks? Are they trying to make sense of my life? Are they worried that my story is a cautionary tale? Are they concerned about me? The why just isn’t what’s important to me right now. It’s hard to put words to what happened, why I left, how I got to this point, and what now. I don’t have the emotional distance and perspective yet to have a narrative about where to start, what parts of the story are important for which groups of people, and how the pieces fit together. I feel a sort of stunned sense of existence that is only in the present tense – the here and now. 

Status: It’s complicated.

It’s wild how many different ways there are to name my status. When I use the active voice and place myself as the agent and decision-maker: 

• I resigned. 
• I quit. 
• My already-retired friends say I retired. But I’m not really retired according to our US labor culture and regulations. I’ve got over a decade to go until I am government-official retired. I was just a couple years away from benefits associated with 20 years of institutional employment. But it was fun to throw my own “retirement party” with my friends/former co-workers. And I am retiring my Wonder Woman work persona; more on that in a different post. I’m not really retired, though. 
• I’m unemployed. Well, only sort of. I have a couple projects I consult on that pay for the monthly expenses.
• I’m institutionally unaffiliated. Completely true, and I have a reaction whenever I hear “tell us your name and institution” at any conference event or have to enter an institution name on a registration form. 

I’m going to stop there and admit the unkind, snooty, judgmental, superiority scripts I have internalized. I have a reaction when someone says they resigned (“the place was horrible”). I make assumptions when someone says they quit (“they couldn’t hack it”). I create a story when I imagine someone is retired (“they’re living the high life now”). I have caricatures of people who are unemployed (“who’s fault was it?”). I feel ashamed that I didn’t have a long, loyal, “successful” career. I feel jealous when I see friends and mentors advancing on paths I had imagined for myself. I feel sorrow for the dreams and enthusiasm that have lost their spark. I’m processing the usual grief emotions of denial, despair, shame, anger, sadness. I know working out those emotions internally and in safe relationships and communities will lead toward the compassionate integration of these feelings into a larger meaning, sense of purpose, and feeling of belonging about my accomplishments, commitments, and clarified priorities. 

Waking up to reality

I remember the day in January of this year when I realized and accepted that I wasn’t the person I was four years ago. I was taking an online course on group facilitation from my bed while recovering from surgery. We were tasked to dream big about the room where each of us imagined facilitating our own groups. Sadly, rather than imagining a fictional space that is practically perfect in every way, I recalled my usual reserved space: a non-descript first-floor seminar room in the campus building. I could barely spark my creativity enough to make it special and welcoming to my group in my mind. 

And then I remembered–I have to GET to that room before I can even make it special and welcoming as a group experience. And my heart dropped. Just a couple weeks post surgery, I knew I’d be exhausted long before I even got from the reserved parking spaces to the stairs to the front door. Around the same time, my phone popped up one of those “remember this four years ago?!?” photos. It was me in April 2019, just starting this job. I was thinner, younger, lighter, and happier. Since then, I’ve faced death multiple times. These past four years have changed me fundamentally. 

I tried really, really hard to make it work and keep going since I had took the role of assistant vice provost in 2019. Through multiple family tragedies. Through a multi-year pandemic. Through a mental health breakdown. Through a major injury, surgery, and recovery. My Wonder Woman workaholic/save everyone and everything persona was exhausted and burnt out. The work I most enjoyed and felt successful at – direct one-on-one creative work, community-building, and inter-organizational collaborations – was getting squeezed out by administrative tasks I didn’t enjoy and didn’t have skills for. I was standing in the way of work getting done and of others’ advancement. Each brush with death was cutting it closer and closer.

Renewal. Wandering. Exploration. Curiosity.

I recently gave a keynote at a conference on graduate student career development in which I shared some of my professional path – graduate student, instructional faculty of biology, teaching center consultant, assistant vice provost. And now…this in-between space and what to call it.

• I’m self-employed.
• I’m on a self-funded sabbatical. A friend offered this phrase to me the day after I said I quit. She knew it would make sense as a perfectly reasonable characterization to an academic. And it is completely true. 
• I am exploring new ways to put my strengths, values, and clarified needs and boundaries to service. 

At the conference, I acknowledged the many ways our work in graduate student/postdoc development is so challenging. Our origins as consultants and coaches to grads and postdocs are in many different epistemologies, thus we use different terms to describe what we do, how, and why. We regularly have to overcome barriers to inter-organizational collaboration to do our best work. We experience job creep as we take on more and more of the holistic care of graduate students and postdocs. We work in problem-saturated landscapes that expose us regularly to the effects of vicarious trauma. We were the strong ones during the pandemic who are now burned out, exhausted beyond tired.

I hadn’t anticipated the ways my presentation would affect my professional colleagues employed by academic institutions. Sharing my story and saying the hard things out loud resonated in ways that brought up big emotions for many of them. So many people came up to me in tears, needing a hug, needing to have a piece of them witnessed and held with care, wanting to talk privately. 

Presenting at that conference affirmed how important it is to me to be in communities of care, concern, reciprocity, affirmation, transgression, courage, and authenticity. These are the kinds of communities I regularly nurture and facilitate for graduate students and postdocs. I got to experience my own belonging in a similar community of career development professionals during my time at the conference. It’s given me some thoughts about how to nurture these kinds of communities regularly for colleagues. I can see I’m better able to provide that support to my peers and colleagues now that I am outside a problem-saturated landscape.