About An Improbable Academic

How have I come to be in the position to create my “An Improbable Academic” handle and write this blog post?

The short answer:

Privilege.

The longer answer is the privileges positions I have occupied (and continue to occupy) to have been able to engage in and complete the work that I have done.

I’m currently in a permanent faculty position at a University, but not in the professor stream. I have the equivalent of tenure as an academic, without the pressure of publish or perish. In my current role I will not be spending the next 10-15 years chasing the dangled carrot of tenure and promotion in the assistant-associate-full professor progression, as I have topped out when it comes to both salary and promotion.

(I started to write that I can stay where I am quite comfortably, but realize that isn’t correct – I can stay where I am safely, because to put myself onto the tenure-track career trajectory I would give up the tenure-equivalent I already hold. I can stay where I am quite safely)

I used to (feed? thrive? survive?) on “I don’t know how you do it”. That comment fed me all through grad school – at least I appeared successful, even if feeling like I was failing everything and everybody. There was a personal cost/defense mechanism to subsisting on this comment – but that isn’t what this post is about (tempting as it might be to head down that path). Rather, this post is about how I am coming recognize my credit-taking of my individual accomplishments as complicit with neoliberal rationality.

My individual, embodied experiences can’t be considered outside of the context in which they occurred, but there is little room for this consideration when looking through a lens that obscures the social.

Yes, I met the requirements for acceptance into a PhD program.

No, I would not have been positioned to apply in the first place if not for completing a PhD to be considered a reasonable and achievable goal for someone in my socioeconomic bracket, with my family background, and with my (then) husband’s financial security.

Yes, I did the work to complete my PhD in Counselling Psychology.

No, I would not have been able to sacrifice family time to focus on studies if the financial space for me to decrease my work hours from full time to part time did not already exist. And we were still able to afford what we needed wanted, including vacations, a house in the suburbs, childcare, new vehicles, etc, ensuring I was able to recover from the applied effort along the way.

Yes, I had both of my children while in the PhD.

No, I probably wouldn’t have survived that part if not being in the position to be able to hire a full time care-giver for our family while I completed my pre-doctoral internship and wrote my dissertation. I did not have to realistically or practically worry about their care.

No, I probably wouldn’t have openly defied the openly held attitudes held towards younger female academics who might have had (or one day have) children that will distract from academic pursuits if I hadn’t already stood on a foundation that allows for people who look and sound like me to use their voices.

Yes, I had the pre-doctoral internship experience I wanted to have, with the people I wanted to learn from (that I continue forward with still) and that have facilitated the majority of my professional opportunities that have followed.

No, I couldn’t have had that experience if I wasn’t in a (financial) position to be able to participate in an unpaid internship, and to exercise my position of being able to “speak to the manager” (I was just old enough to embrace my “Karen” rather than remaining a subservient student) and advocate for the supervised experience that would have meaning for me versus what would reflect well on paper in the University’s application for accreditation of the program.

Yes, I was successful in competition for my current academic position and achieving my permanent (equivalent to tenure) status.

No, I would not be here if not for inhabiting the socioeconomic position to have remained in a position that lacked security (renewing contract vs. full-time, without full-time hours) for almost seven years. I would not have been able to proceed on “good faith” that a full-time position would eventually open up, and to play that game that is all too familiar to junior academics and adjunct faculty.

No, I would very likely not be here if union rules didn’t dictate that I was required to be placed in the permanent position once it materialized, as my dissent with the process was already showing despite not having the position of security from which to display it, and it had already been noted and disapproved of.

I am not downplaying my accomplishments.

I am acknowledging what has facilitated my opportunities to accomplish.

I am acknowledging what is currently facilitating my voice to dissent (I mean, isn’t that what the permanency of academic positions is intended for?)

I am acknowledging that it is highly unlikely that I will seek (or be eligible for) a tenure-track professorship, as I have not played the game of academia (outwit, outlast, outplay) shrewdly in my seven years and counting spent as an academic.

I am also acknowledging that it is improbable that I will choose to remain an academic as academia currently exists, because I am not willing to continue to perpetuate this culture and so many of these practices.

So here I am – An Improbable Academic in academia, howling into the wind about academic culture, experience, resistance, and change.

---

---