It was to be my last faculty retreat. At the time I did not know that. Nor did I know a pandemic was coming. All I knew was that the name on my place setting was wrong. I had been teaching there for fifteen years and they still misspelled my last name. God knows how they would have mangled my first name, Terence. I had also asked for the chicken. Nope. Fish and chips. Then it occurred to me I was becoming the manky foolishness I hated most about working in academia–Mr. Privilege.
I am not talking about some woke, cul-de-sac version of myself. I am talking about academic privilege of the brand that can work itself into a full snit about “how, by God, I have toiled in the sub-basement of academe long enough to get my goddamn name spelled effing right on a place card”. I trotted out in my own mind the familiar schema of how I had trod the grapes of learning into wine and learned how names are important and how people get pissed off if they are treated as cavalierly as mine had just been. These greatest hits of grievance and affront brought to us by the apartheid of the university tenure system slowly boiling me into a something I barely recognized.
A fuse blew. A big one. I took my pen with deliberation and proofread my own name in red ink. I promised myself that I was done or done as soon as I could get done. There was no replacing that fuse, the one whose breaking showed me how corrupt in my heart I had become. By the end of the school year I was done, retired from all future faculty retreats, retired from grievances about tenure, and retired from that continuing, long, slow boil of corruption. Retired from all of it.
I ended up eating my fish and chips that day. Pretty tasty. I gathered wool in my own head that day and spun out new and better name tags and meals to be eaten in the future. I watched my colleagues with filters off. I did not hate any of them and I looked with fond pity on the trap they had all sprung on themselves, the one we all spring on ourselves. You know, the one where Pangloss insists we live in the best of all possible worlds when we know down deep that we can only tend our own garden, much less someone else’s.
That scary place is where I live now. I am wanting my dreams to be my own. I barely recognize them as we pass each other on the page. “Those are my own dreams,” I say in awe and proud recognition. I am their paparazzi. We laugh as I snap a selfie, us together, even as we both know we have no celebrity. My dreams give me a deranged grin. Dangerous. Very.
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I had a similar journey. Retired 12/31/21 and have no regrets. Our educational systems are fucked.
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No regrets about it either. We laid down parallel tracks next to the horror rollercoaster called ‘school’, didn’t we? We did all the things to make the place as safe as we could, but as Einstein famously or perhaps apocryphally said, “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” We did lots of singular goods but systemically? Not so much. I used to think it would be enough for the old guard to die or retire, but I don’t anymore. The system, being well and truly fucked, cannot become. Kinda like the pipedream that electoral politics now is in our totally gamed system.
On a rounder and happier note, I have missed your voice terribly. Please help me to stay in touch.
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That is one shitty place card. I’m sorry that your retirement came with that kind of frustration, but I also get it 100%. And man, you and your dreams taking a selfie. What an image. And also, the way you saw your colleagues in unfiltered light, no hate but fine clarity, that day. I had a faculty meeting like that when we “returned” from pandemic and gathered for the first one of 21-22. My angle of vision on the thing had shifted SHARPLY.
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I am so happy to see this and I will respond better when I am situated at home this evening. Thanks.
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Commenting is an art and a skilled form in its own right. You have that talent in spades.
1. Your short, bittersweet and funny reaction.
2. Some empathy is always good.
3. A specific response to the selfie.
4. Elaborating
5. Relating a similar experience, a bit more empathy.
6. Introducing a new idea–angle of vision.
You win the big prize. I know how you feel about ‘returning’ from the pandemic. Sharp is one of those cool words that sound and is plosive. Of course, being deliberately obtuse with the word ‘thing’ is a nice ‘angle’. I like that and I also like the idea of a critical stance.
Never hurts to say thanks again. Thanks again.
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I get called Sara often. I think it’s rude as well.
Lucky you didn’t mind the fish – I often get given a dead-meat option despite asking for vege.
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Yes, Sarah without the soft haitch, not to be spoken of in polite company. Luckily…..
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You are such a lovely writer.
It took me a good many years into my last life change and then “semi retirement” or whatever this is to find a little peace , or at least enough to move on to something better for my self and others. I found some of that in the soil and I know you are already wise enough to look there for the goodness earth offers.
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I think the word ‘lovely’ is one of the loveliest in our mother tongue. “Retirement” is allowing me to get in a writing rhythm although I have a new ewe with a pair of golden wet babies down at the barn. All is well and I need a cup of coffee so it is back to the house for 30 minutes of coffee break . She still has to drop the placenta, but she is well-bonded to her lambies. It is a peaceful moment to have them all safe in their lambing pen and the mama chewing hay and drinking water. I could go on and on with pastoral idyllics, but I won’t. Thanks and thanks again for dropping by and sharing.
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Wool gathering is a mighty pursuit. And names spelled properly is simply showing respect. I’ll be calling you Terence from now on. 🙂
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Woolgathering is mighty but only if its purpose is to have none. Once you let all the pieces gather together into a twisty strand of greasy thread, it ain’t woolgathering any more. It becomes wool-gathering.