20190825.0430

I've had occasion recently to consider--yet again, or still, since I'm not certain it's been far from the front of my mind at any point--my further removal from academe. An online conversation not too long ago put it back into the front of my mind; in essence, the question about what to do with graduate students in the humanities who do not or cannot secure tenure-track employment (which is most of us, really) came up again, with a professor looking for answers to be able to pass on to students (also at the undergraduate level), and I answered from my own experience stumbling into the job I currently have after being spurned for the last time by the tenured world.
I am aware that my experience is not typical. I don't imagine that all of us who enter graduate school thinking we will become professors, only to be disappointed and frustrated at the unwillingness of the academic world to increase again its ranks of full-time mind-workers, will be able to do as I was lucky enough to do and find a job that makes some use of our skills and does not take a look at the post-nominal cluster of letters that bespeak the years in class and working to push back the boundaries of human ignorance and push us away. I don't imagine many will find a place whose leadership is looking to retire and seeks a successor, either. So there's a limit to how applicable my experience will be for others.
My testimony seems to have been appreciated, though. There is some validation in having those among whose company I aspired to be looking with favor on what I write and say, some whiff of "I didn't fail to get a tenure-line job because I'm not smart enough, not good enough." (That I am as happy about it as I am probably says something unpleasant about me. I do not think I want to explore it much further than that.) And I can hope that the comments, being where they are and having attracted the attention that they have, will attract more attention to me, both for the sake of my vanity and for the sake of my freelance work (which I still do and can stand to have more to do). So there is that much to consider.
In the meantime, I am glad to have the job I have and be poised to take the one I am about to take. I am doing better now than when I was "following the dream" and seeking to find a tenure-line position to fill. And I think I am doing better work in the world; I still work against the boundaries of human ignorance (doing more now than I did while amid the search, as it happens), and I am in a place where I do not have to worry every few months about whether or not I will have a job next week. It's a nice thing, and I can hope that more people get to have it.