No one seems to talk about the flagrant brutalities of the job market for academics or professionals. I’ve been at this academic job search for almost 20 years and have yet to land THE job – the one I want, the one I most desire, the one that feeds my soul, the one that is my life’s purpose. I have landed jobs that I take to get by, to survive and find pieces of them to love, to feed my soul. I’ve adjusted my hopes, dreams, and expectations. While finishing my Ph.D., I envisioned a tenure track faculty job. I applied for hundreds, if not thousands. From that flurry of applications (to which I have enumerated the time spent preparing materials elsewhere), I was rewarded with exactly 2 interviews (one of which I fumbled due to communication errors and time zone issues).

I took jobs that I needed, not the ones I wanted. I worked to find something redeemable about each position – clinical faculty (loved the work and the students, loathed the shit pay and the multiple “other duties as assigned” always heaping more on my plate), writing assessment coordinator (loved working with students and doing faculty development, didn’t care for the tedium of bi-annual reports and bureaucracy), and director of teaching and learning (loved that I was working within my area of expertise and the faculty development, reviled the top leadership and their abuse of staff and faculty – a truly toxic environment).

While in all of those positions, I did other work – side work. Always. At one time I had 5 jobs – temporary, part-time, contract/project based, or MLM type things. Even as my income increased, I always had more than one job. I had my full-time job and contract/project based work. Much of this was necessary to make the money I needed to survive, feed my kids, keep a roof over our heads, etc. Even after my kids were grown and out of the house, I kept these jobs to support myself and help them when they needed – and they needed my help for their survival and stability.

While doing this extra work, I gained valuable skills, contacts, and experiences that added to my expertise and skillset. I did the work for survival, in part, but also to gain the experience that could better inform my full-time work.

While in the full-time positions, I continued applying for THE jobs I desired. I don’t know how many jobs I applied for over the years, I used to keep record but lost track a long time ago. I probably applied for another couple hundred jobs over the years and have gotten exactly 1 interview. That job would have been perfect for me – absolutely perfect. I had let go of the idea of finding a tenure track job at a research extensive university years before applying to this job. This was a teaching/master’s granting institution, not a research extensive one. An institution where I had many contacts across the institution that I’d worked with on grants, projects, and faculty development. However, in the end I got absolutely screwed over by a “friend” and colleague who was on the search committee and the job was offered to the other top candidate – who ended up declining the offer after initially accepting it. I continued applying for faculty and administrative positions – getting more interviews for the admin positions, coming close to several positions, but not making the final cut.

The adjunct position I have now was one I had obtained while in my last full-time position. It was a good way for me to maintain my teaching skills, work directly with students (my passion), and earn a little extra money. Emphasis on the little. While I was working full-time, the institution was asking me to teach more and more classes – to the point it became harder to maintain. I was thankful for this little adjunct position when my full-time job came to an end – not fired, it was grant funded and when the grant ended so did my position. And maintain, I did for a while, thinking this bought be time before I needed to aggressively job search. Then my classes started being cut – I went from teaching 4, sometimes 5 courses, to teaching only one now. To say this is financially untenable, is an understatement.

In the meantime, I’ve been applying for jobs – THE jobs and other jobs, inside academe and outside. I’ve tried applying to jobs that align with my values – non-profit/NGOs, jobs needing some education focus (curriculum creating, teaching assistant type thing, etc), and private industry that isn’t soulless. Again, in the last couple of years, I’ve probably applied for over 100 positions and gotten exactly 0 interviews. Of late, I’ve been lowering and lowering my standards for a job. I cannot go another year applying for academic jobs without a full-time job for a job in 2027. The academic job market is hiring for the following year for the vast majority of job announcements. And the job announcement season begins in August, running through April/May and they begin with the more prestigious institutions advertising earlier and the less prestigious institutions later in the season. That’s mostly for academic jobs, administrative jobs sometimes follow that same pattern, but there is more flexibility in hire date than academic jobs. I lay this out for non-academic folx because I know this is unusual for most other industries.

So, as I approach total and complete financial devastation, again, I am also battling all the negative awful thoughts and this perseverating on past choices and lost opportunities. The financial situation is whatever it is – perhaps I’ll be imprisoned for not paying my taxes (meager if you consider the billionaires and corporations that do not pay taxes or don’t pay their fair share). I seriously do not care about this as I don’t care to make the current criminal regime any richer, don’t care to fund genocide anywhere, and certainly don’t want to contribute to the regression of our rights and the brutal systems being constructed to further oppress Black and Brown people, women, trans humans, and immigrants. Perhaps, I’ll end up having whatever wages I may earn in the future forever garnished due to credit card balances I am wholly unable to pay. Whatever, been there, done that. It is whatever the fuck it is. Money is just socially constructed anyways. Our whole experience is constructed for us by some of the worst humans who’ve ever lived, so my level of caring is low, while my stress is high because I’d love to pay my bills, put it out of my mind, and not have to think about these things again. And my credit score has plummeted further than it ever has, with a rapidness I grossly underestimated. It’s sunk so far that when I do finally have a job and money to rent my own place, I’ll likely need my daughter to co-sign for me. The fucking absurdity of this moment in my life is gobsmacking.

My biggest financial worries are paying my auto and renter’s insurance, cell phone, and my storage. I don’t make enough to cover all three now. I did a few short months ago. But now, with teaching only one class and worrying about whether I’ll even have any classes to teach after this semester, I’ve been thinking about who has the privilege of keeping family mementos and who doesn’t. That is another blog post for another time because I think this is important to think about – who is considered worthy enough to keep hold of their family histories and who is not. I can’t even afford to take care of myself. I live with my kid, she pays all the household bills and buys the food to keep me fed. If I need eye drops for my stupid fucking special eyes, I need to ask her to help me. Fortunately, I don’t need much at the moment. I do need to see a doctor and a dentist though and don’t have health insurance or cash money to do either. I am not able to finance my comforts – no one really discusses this. If I want to grab a beer with a friend, I don’t have money for that. If I want that impulse purchase of a sweet treat at the grocery store, I probably don’t have the money for that. It’s inconvenient.

While the financial issues spin in the back of my brain constantly, I am also pretty consistently berating myself. I’m stupid. I should have planned better. My CV must be a problem. My cover letters aren’t hitting. My name is too weird and probably hits at me being Black. I’m foolish. I’m worthless. I’m not equipped to do anything else except for what I’ve imagined. All I’m going to get is a minimum wage job. I have too much education for a regular non-professional job. I’m either over or under qualified. And the despair – why did I go to a grant funded position, why did I dare to imagine something beyond secretarial work for me, why did I buy into the lies I was told about being anything I wanted to be, why did I buy into the myth of education, why. How do I pull myself out of this hole that keeps getting deeper and deeper every day by the second? What have I done to land myself in this exact position? My application materials aren’t landing? Did I leave something out? I haven’t done enough or I’ve done too much. I suck. I’m incompetent. I’m a giant ass loser. The negative talk goes on and one, never ceasing.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not close to tears or in tears. And I’m not a cryer. I so rarely cry that when I do in the presence of my kids, it freaks them out. When I’m crying, shit is real bad. Real real bad. And they know that, they feel that, the realities hit them. And every day when the negative talk starts reverberating through my brain, I talk back because I would never ever let anyone talk about any one of my friends the way I talk to myself. I know I have value. I know I’m not incompetent. I am one of the smartest people I know. I am highly capable. I am well prepared for the work I do. I’m talented and skilled. I have spheres of expertise in some incredible areas of scholarship that I’ve been proud to contribute to and imagine how things play out in practice.

I guess I feel like I’m losing myself. I’m spiraling down into a pit of despair that is so deep and so vast, I don’t know that I’ll find my way out, let alone find myself again. Additionally, I’m not sure that if I can’t have things the way I want them, that I want them at all. And I don’t know what that means. People don’t just stop existing, no matter how much we might want to stop existing. Do things need to turn out exactly like I imagine? No. But I need some major portion of my wish to be as I imagined, as I want. And I fucking deserve that. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve sacrificed and labored through all manner of bullshit – single parenting throughout grad school, being POA for my grandma throughout 1/3 of my g rad program, asshole racist leadership, being a fucking workhorse for a grad program for shit pay, maintaining my scholarship while in positions that don’t require or maybe even value that, networking like a maniac across institutions across the U.S. and internationally, a doozy of a fucked up divorce and custody battle. There is simply too much bullshit to list and stories behind every item on that list, some of it deep fucking trauma with lasting PTSD. And I haven’t even touched on anti-Blackness, racism, sexism, and misogyny.

I guess McDonald’s and Wal-Mart are always hiring. That’s my next search because ain’t nothing else panning out and I don’t think I have the energy or the stamina to aim much fucking higher than that. I’m not saying this to diminish those jobs at all. I’ve worked fast-food. All labor deserves a living wage without having to work multiple jobs. Every human is worthy of that. I’m just educated, trained, and skilled in a professional arena; as a result, I do view these jobs as below my skill and expertise level. But I’m not sure I can hope for anything more in this economy, in this nation, at this moment in history. With over 600,000 Black women put out of their jobs in the last 18-ish months, I am but merely one of the many. And I ain’t anything special (I mean, I am but so is every single one of the over 600,000 Black women.) Is my desire to land THE job a case of sunken cost fallacy? I fear it is and I’ve reached the end of the line. And I don’t know what that means for me, my future, or my hope for brighter days for myself or this country. Not that my contributions are so grand as to prop up this country; and if this is what I and so many other highly educated and capable Black women are experiencing, how are people with less education and capabilities faring?

I’m trying not to just give the fuck up but I don’t know how much more fight I have in me for this particular bullshit experience. I’m not sure academe is where I’m wanted, needed, or even want to be anymore but I don’t know what else I want to do – become a brick mason, a rug cleaner, a heavy equipment operator? Maybe I should have been working on certifications, getting a real estate license, or something else. And really, any of the ideas for a career shift, have me starting at the bottom of the food chain – which, other than the pay, I really don”t care anymore. I just know what money I need to be making to survive somewhat comfortably for a time (cuz the universe knows I won’t really be able to retire) and don’t think that is going to happen any time soon with me starting at the bottom of whatever industry I find myself in at some point.

Not sure there is much hope to be found in this sea of despair. Yet. I know I’ll rise out of this at some point. I’m just not sure what will be left of me to bring forward. It took me so very fucking long to get to where I was a mere 3-years ago and 3-years to land me right back to where I was when I was a young mother on welfare, trying to get my education so that I would never not have what I need or want out of this one life.