Hope
Unions in Academia and other stuff
Today I was notified that one of my colleagues at one of my universities won her unemployment appeal. This was a nice, and frankly surprising, turn of events, particularly given where I was when I got the news: sitting in the parking lot of a church waiting to go into the funeral of a truly wonderful woman. So, it was that strange mixture of joy and grief that occurs from time to time. I’m mostly allergic to churches, but the service was beautiful, a reminder of the centrality of hope to a good life.
I’ve been running on hope for quite some time now. An adjunct without hope is going to have a rough time. It sort of defines our position in the academic world. It’s also how university administrators manipulate us. My own unemployment process is underway but remains unresolved. I’m hoping for something to happen next week. It’s about that time of the summer when the panic typically sets in, whatever I’ve saved simply gone from the account.
I’ve applied for unemployment in previous summers. Sometimes it works out, and other times it doesn’t, as I wrote a few weeks ago.
It occurs to me that several things have helped me not slip into panic this time around. One of the biggest is that I have made a point of not just letting things happen to me, but instead being active in improving, not just my situation, but those of my colleagues, as well. That’s not meant as self-aggrandizement, but as a recognition of how broadening my focus has helped my mental health.
I am now officially a union steward at one of my universities, with the very real possibility of doing it for one of the others (Sorry University 3, my dance card is full). The process by which I became a steward was stressful, and I’m guessing being one will also be stressful. The colleague who won her appeal was assisted and represented by a steward whom I had run into at an AAUP-sponsored workshop at University 3 (again, sorry).
So, I’m observing a process through which cooperation, not just among faculty at individual universties but between union members from multiple universities, has generated momentum. Huh, maybe I now get the union thing more than I did when I began the past, frustrating academic year with rage and heartbreak. Well, grief, really:
So, I get to spend time doing additional hopeful things. The draft of my novel reached 22,000 words last weekend. I’m writing it on a thing I built:
One of my novel’s characters has an abrasive personality, so much so that my writing group has been thinking she might turn out to be the villain. Spoiler alert: she won’t. Her abrasiveness is motivated by a desire to build her community, grief for the hope she once had, and a desire to hope again.
The real-life woman we were celebrating today had the opposite kind of personality. She was certainly no villain. She was a builder, not a breaker.
My fictional character used to teach at a university. I’m not yet sure if Angeline had a union at her university (she’s just got one; I like her, so I wouldn’t have the heart to give her three). If it turns out she did, she’d definitely be a union steward.
Here’s where I write something about hope for my nation and my belief in democracy as an expression of community. I’m not going to do that. It’s July 2, 2024, and I’m still too far into the grief. Angeline has more agency in her fictional nation than I do in mine. I’ll stay there for a little while.