What am I even doing

This weekend I'm in the in-between space of classes ending and finals week beginning. My classes will meet one more time to finish existing work and share projects, but there's no new stuff to do. No more slides to prepare, copies to make, or work to assign. Just feedback to give and conversations to have. For the first time in a while, I have the time and energy to think about stuff other than what's beyond the next week or so. I'm looking ahead to the summer and fall, and I'm looking back too.

It's the end of April. The 30th, which happens to be my defensiversary. Eight years ago today I defended my PhD. I still have feelings about that day. I was so anxious that when I finished my presentation I sobbed before taking questions. I felt such relief at being done. It wasn't perfect. Not by a long shot. But it was done. I'm feeling a similar kind of relief about the past year. It was hard and imperfect, but it's done.

This time last year I had been fired from my tenure-track job. No tenure decision, just budget excuses and a "courtesy" 1-year appointment. Eleven professors were fired in November 2020, following numerous staff layoffs. Faculty and students held an event mourning the loss of colleagues shortly before Thanksgiving. We laid flowers at the feet of a statue of Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy, the order who had founded our university. At that event I spoke to a local reporter about our grief and the injustice of the terminations. I was the only professor fired in Spring 2021. Make of that what you will.

This time last year I had agreed to the 1-year contract, but the thought of coming back to a place that had mistreated my colleagues and me didn't sit well. A couple weeks later I would see the posting for the job I have now. I applied, interviewied, got hired, had an offer accepted on a house, and moved my family 120 miles by the end of the summer. The fall was busy and complicated. We moved multiple times, going from one temporary home to another until the closing on our new house, and even moving our belongings in several trips spread out over months. We sold our old house over the winter.

A few years ago I made an account on Mastodon, but since few people in my existing network were on the fediverse, I checked it only very occasionally. Now that Musk may be buying Twitter, lots of people I know are moving to Mastodon (or at least trying it out), and I've returned with a new account in a different instance. (Find me @belehaa@scholar.social if you'd like.) Seeing everyone's introduction posts has nudged me to think about how I might introduce myself, and I don't know what to say that fits in a toot.

For six years I was on the tenure-track, teaching classes, serving on committees, helping my department recruit and retain students, and doing little bits of research on this and that. I was assured I had done enough to clear the bar for tenure at my teaching-focused institution. But I never got a decision. The spring I was fired, none of the faculty who should have had a tenure decision were granted tenure. The Board decided to "study" tenure instead.

Lesson learned: The job won't love you back.

My new job doesn't come with a tenure decision, but it does come with a union, and that is immensely valuable to me. I'm not under the illusion that my new university is morally superior to the old one. They can burn me just as well as the last place, but at least I stand some chance of recourse. I have some hope that if they tried to fire me I'd get more solidarity than "Gosh, that's too bad."

The switch to a non-tenured position came with its own identity crisis. I'm hardly original in this way. Like so many others, I left grad school hoping for an academic position with tenure. It's strange not to want that any more. (Don't get me wrong, if they offered me tenure, I'd take it, but I just don't want to jump through any more tenure-track hoops.) If I had been on the tenure-track this year, there is no way I could have made adequate research progress toward tenure. The projects I'd had in the works last year were not readily portable, and even thinking about them hurts, like bumping a bruised place. I'd have needed to start over, and that is its own kind of demoralizing. The part of my career that I have enjoyed the most is the teaching. This job is all about teaching, and it's been great to focus on that part. Restorative, even.

So who am I now and what am I doing?

I am a mom of two, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an aunt, and a granddaughter mourning the recent loss of her last grandparent. I am a chemist, an educator, and an enthusiastic nerd. I am trying to make the world a kinder place. I am making chemistry as welcome a space as I can manage for the fledgling scientists in my care. I am convincing non-scientists to give chemistry a chance. I am learning, growing, and persevering.