[Written March 2023 & submitted to something that did not happen; it seems apropos now]

What not to say to a sixty-ish woman whose university announced it will be closing the end of the academic year:

Are you scared?

I’d be an idiot if I weren’t.

Will you be looking for another job?

Do you have a winning lottery ticket in your pocket that you are willing to give to me? Otherwise, probably yes. I like to eat and have a roof over my head. Have you seen the skyrocketing costs of everything as billionaires burn their money on rockets to space and underground bunkers to hide from the people they helped impoverish in the world they set on fire? I foresee a future that includes a lot of ramen packages.

What are you going to do?!

That remains to be seen. Honestly, I have no idea. Got any ideas that aren’t just hoping for the best? Or that have affordable salaries? And healthcare! I’d prefer those that don’t involve going back to school. Or regular hours. I never could abide being trapped in an office from 9 to 5.

I can’t believe this! Can you believe this?

No one who has been involved in education has any trouble believing this as we have seen it coming like Godzilla tromping up Fifth Avenue. I’ve been an official iceberg alarmist on the waters of education for quite a few years now. Our campus had its first ‘Uh oh!’ moment about seven years ago. It starts with belt-tightening. Then it moves to program cutting. Next are the reorganization efforts—all of which require a host of consultants and more administrators because there is no problem in academia that cannot be solved and/or fatally run into the ground without a good phalanx of consultants and a brisk new cadre of administrators. Within a generation education will be for the elites unless we start turning this particular ship.

Have you considered adjuncting?

You mean that precarious work done by the desperate to keep a foot in the educational world in hopes that it will turn into full-time, reasonably paid and benefits-having work? Yes, you mean that exploitive system we should have stopped years ago when our jobs were somewhat more secure, and we could see it was a bad idea and yet did nothing? That one?

Are you going to move into administration?

Honestly, I’d rather adjunct. At least I would be causing less harm.

You can probably retire, right?

On my ‘retirement’ funds? The first thing frozen every time there was any kind of budget scare at our institution? That thing I didn’t pay into while going back to school for the PhD I decided I really wanted because I was enamoured of knowledge and thirsted to learn and found excitement in the intricacies of the past and the ways they had been misunderstood, continue to be misunderstood, and now in all likelihood will always be misunderstood, misused and soon forgotten because the past is so over, dude? Social Security which the GOP will strip as soon as they are in power again? [see recent events]

Are you going to move to Scotland?

Not the typical question for people in my situation but it reflects the long relationship I have had that academia has made if not ideal, then liveable: a relationship that spans the Atlantic. If you are lucky enough to have love, you don’t demand it also be conveniently located. Or at least it never occurred to me to do so.

There’s a naïve American assumption that everyone welcomes them—after all, it’s what their government has tried to tell them for years. It ignores the reality that 1) if it were that easy, I would have already done it and 2) the Tories have made everything in the UK worse including the difficulty of immigration because they have the same xenophobic numpties we have in the US, they just have posh accents so Americans image they are more ‘civilised’ which couldn’t be further from the truth. Because of the way things work here (I write this from Dundee) the current government is headed by an unelected person appointed by his party who were in power. He has hired all his friends and they are on a free-for-all to loot as much as possible before the people of Britain finally stop harrumphing to get their attention to notice their disapproval or wait for a general election to happen. [The election happened; the watered down Labour is much like the Biden Dems: right wing lite and bound to end in another disastrous election]

When my brother and I were clearing out my dad’s house we found this badge in his toolbox. He had been a tool maker for Oldsmobile. In 1970 the United Auto Workers union struck General Motors: 67 days, 145 plants. We were kids but we knew the strike was serious. Dad didn’t go to work: if there was a man who lived by habits, it was our dad. Our lives revolved around whichever shift he was working. Day shifts were best; afternoons were worst. Lots of quiet required. Night shifts were just weird—especially the night the bat got in the house and mom ran out of the bedroom so fast the dog got shut in and cried while we considered how best to deal with the bat circling the light.

While my dad was on strike he moonlighted at the big department store downtown. He hated it. But his employee discount got us a cool FM stereo. It was the advent of FM radio and it was always on once it entered the house, every day until everyone was in bed. Mostly the local MOR station, though at some point the cutting-edge technology of the 8-track tape made its debut. There are certain Johnny Cash songs that don’t sound right without the pause in the middle of the song while it changed from one track to the next. Lousy technology.

The strike was awful. My mother was more concerned than ever about pinching every penny until it cried for mercy. But the strike was important. Those cigar-chomping executives couldn’t throw their weight around forever. Not when it was people like my dad and my uncles and my cousins who did the actual work.

What we learned was simple. UNITY. We are many, they are few. If we stick together they can’t break us. I remember trying to convey that message to my colleagues in one of the early emergency what-are-we-going-to-do faculty meetings. My colleagues were mostly white collar folks, GDI, with college-educated parents who were much the same. They didn’t feel the peril we faced down in their bones.

So they‘re closing my institution. So it goes.