The Toll of Walker's Regime

As much as I truly love my job, there are things I miss very much about being a public employee. Worrying about budget cuts as part of a state system is not one of them.

My former colleagues posted a letter from our (well, their) much-respected chancellor announcing some unexpected budget cuts. Today this appeared in my newsfeed:  "State tells UW System to make additional $65.7M in budget cuts".

Reading about the additional budget cuts to the UW System, I am saddened to think of the toll on the health of state employees.

I have lost track of how many of my friends and former colleagues went on anti-depressants, increased the dosage of psych meds, or had other symptoms exacerbated by the stress and soul-wearying attacks on public employees. How much can a person or a community bear? How many days have been lost, how much scholarship was not done, professional hallway conversations did not take place, and joy in teaching was lost because of Scott Walker's short-sighted decisions? How many people have just given up?

And the physical health is just as bad, with stress-related physical symptoms and missed work days due to viruses that were able to take hold because a human being's immune system can handle only so much. 

Although my job certainly has its challenges, I feel much more joyful and light-hearted than I did during my last  six months in the UW System. While part of that is due to the fact that I am in the right place for my soul, I know that it is also the result of feeling free from the restraints of working in conditions that are continually worsening as a result of Walker's leadership.

It breaks my heart to think about how long it will take my friends and former co-workers to heal from this year. 

My Post-Grading Life

I was a college writing instructor from 1988 to 2011--23 years of planning, reading, responding, grading, and engaging with student texts and minds. I always loved my job as a whole, but I never, ever liked grading.

Over the years, I developed various tricks to help keep me motivated and get me through a set of papers. In fact, at one point I wrote a list called something like "How to Grade Papers at Home" that included a full page of procrastination strategies (including writing a list of procrastination strategies). It included things like

• counting how many papers I had left to grade and then counting again every few papers to help me feel more accomplished.
• watching a Tom Cruise movie (this was back before his anti-post-partum depression rants) in case I ever wanted to use them in class.
• crafting wonderful paper assignments for future semesters ("after all, if I don't capture my ideas now, they'll disappear altogether").

Back when I still smoked, I would reward myself with a cigarette for every five papers graded. Eventually I began to use M&M's as a reward.

I didn't mind reading student writing; in fact, I loved reading and getting to know my students. I just hated having to judge a paper and then spend time writing a justification of the grade. I felt like every end comment became a written argument designed to prevent questions. Even when I used portfolio evaluation, I felt the same way.

So I find myself very puzzled by the fact that I am still struggling to adjust to life without grading. I am now a full-time administrator. I have extracted myself from the world and rhythms of the classroom to inhabit a life that includes long days with regular hours and never carrying more than a purse and a lunch bag home with me. Yet I still see so much through the lenses of one who grades.

Today I found myself thinking I could head to the library and sit in front of the big windows where I could see the beautiful fall day while grading. When I realized that I had no grading, I felt sad. My friends and former colleagues have started a Facebook page called The Giant Stack of Grading. I am reminded of the sense of community that develops among those who share the burden of grading and need to vent with each other about it. Although I understand that life, I no longer live it--and I feel left out that I no longer have that in common with friends who are still living the professional life I lived for so long.

This is a struggle I did not anticipate. I miss being part of the work of teaching, even though this piece is work I never enjoyed. I miss the luxury of time. This is ironic because I never felt I had enough time, simply because it was unscheduled and I had things to do. I miss being finished with my scheduled responsibilities by noon and having the option of hunkering down in the library or a coffee shop. I could interrupt what I was doing to engage in conversation, to daydream, to plan my next day of class and shape the majority of my day. It was lovely. Other than the grading

Now my professional days are very different. I love what I am doing, every single day--even though this is not a path I ever imagined I would want. My days off are literally that--days off, with no grading hovering in front of me throughout the weekend.

Today, after I got over my momentary sadness at not having grading to do, I decided to take a nap. When I woke up, I did not have any panic or guilt at thinking about how I should've gotten papers graded so I wouldn't have them waiting for me tomorrow. I love my Sundays, which are about my family and feeling refreshed. I go to work Monday mornings, looking forward to the week ahead.

I'm just going through some growing pains.

The Point of Protests

What are the goals of the protests? Wouldn't it make more sense to effect change by actually doing something?

I heard these questions many times during the Wisconsin protests, and I'm hearing them again now during the Wall Street protests.  Here's my take.

The key function of the initial protests is not to actually make change but to build community. There is something incredibly deep and powerful about being with so many others who share frustrations and passions. To me, the protests are largely about connecting with others. The protests are simply the first phase of a larger movement.

During protests, people begin to connect with each other in more goal-oriented ways. In the Wisconsin protests, I saw small groups develop. Some focused on facilitating the recall votes. Others worked on preparing themselves for candidacy in future elections. Still others created continuous engagement with officials who needed constant vigilance. The second phase evolved naturally from the developing shared sense of purpose among groups of protesters.

Rather than starting with demands or a specific goals, protesters  start with passionate people who form goals as they forge bonds.

In past decades, protests involved a key figure or very specific goal. The power was centered. Now, power is diffused, and multiple goals and demands may grow out of the protests.

I am fascinated to watch what is happening with the Wall Street protests. I can see many possible paths in front of us. Which paths will we follow?

The point of the protests is to protest and to see what happens next. Connect with others, looking for one specific path that your own strengths can help build. The movement is much bigger than the protests, which are simply the first step in trying to make a difference.

Got sanity?

I've had so many things I've been wanting to write lately, mostly about my job and how I feel I'm in the place I'm supposed to be. I mentally blog all the way home from work, and by the time I sit down at the computer my words and thoughts have been replaced by dirty dishes and family conversations. But today I can't seem to write about any of the things I've been writing in my head.

Today what's on my mind is mental health.

Yesterday I spent almost half an hour on the phone with a student who was in tears. She is overwhelmed by her classes and family obligations and frustrated by her experiences with one particular instructor. She started crying on the phone, to the point where I said, "Sweetie, after we hang up, I want you to go stand outside. Take at least ten deep breaths. Soak in the sunshine and make some vitamin D. Your paragraph will still be waiting for you, and you'll be better able to tackle it." Today she stopped by my office to thank me. She felt much better after she took a walk and decided that maybe I was right. I wish it could always be so easy to re-balance our mental health.

I am watching, from afar, the implosion of a former co-worker. Although he never shared with me any mental health issues, I always sensed a fragility. Having struggled with depression myself, I understand what it is to stand in the center of a fog and not be able to see that there is any promise of light. This person seems to be dealing with more than depression, though, and it has been slowly happening over a period of months. I don't know if something new happened or if it is the result of a change in medications, but it is painful. Six months ago I realized that I could no longer talk with him about our typical subjects in the usual ways. Four months ago I sensed that his reality was not the same reality as mine. We occupied the same places and events, but he seemed to be responding to different stimuli than I could even see.

Now he has become disruptive to his colleagues and his students. My understanding is that he is off-campus for a few days, hopefully while seeking treatment. My heart aches to see that he has damaged the spirits of other good friends. They are upset, uncomfortable, and concerned. And he is spiraling out of control. I am  concerned for my friends and former colleagues. It is painful to think of the conversations they are having to have with each other and to think of the perceptions of my ill friend who thinks everyone is out to get him.

Watching it from a distance, unable to truly support people I care about, is heart-wrenching. My body and spirit are in my new workplace, but my heart keeps yearning back to people who are still a piece of me as I wonder about the ripples that will reach out and encompass me before this resolves.

Professional Metamorphosis

I've been at my job a month now. Every day I feel like I'm in a different world. So many transitions swirl around me that my body, mind, and world seem to be spinning.

This week, I am starting to have a sense of routine. This is good. I find that I love the school. Its mission is, truly, a mission--not just a mission statement. The spiritual part of me has been yearning for what happens here. I know this is where I belong right now.

It's ironic, though. I love the place and people where I am now, and I deeply miss the people and place I was before. I don't miss my actual job, though. My days are long, and then they're over. I have guilt-free Sundays, with no grading or planning at all.

Still (and this is the ironic part), I find that I am mourning the loss of that job more than I mourn the loss of people and place. I know I will see many of the people I care about again, and I can always visit. I mourn the loss of my professional identity. For more than twenty years, I was a college writing teacher. Every time I see an article that relates to something I would teach, I have to let it go. When I find myself with no papers to grade, I have to remind myself that it isn't what I do anymore. Letting myself experience this loss of such a core part of who I have been for two decades is even harder than I had imagined.

Meanwhile, I try to build a new professional sense of self, one that is imbued with this spiritual component. I feel I am reshaping myself from the inside out.

And I wonder, when the caterpillar is becoming a butterfly, does it know it is changing? Does it hurt?

"It's Just Stuff"

I started my new job yesterday, heading on a trajectory I hadn't anticipated. In order to mentally be in my new place, I needed to clean out the old place. I have been a teacher for more than twenty years and at the campus I just left for ten. Although it was my third office on the campus, moving offices has involved having the maintenance folks move fully loaded filing cabinets and my carrying one box at a time, unloading and reloading until the work was done.

This time was different. I probably will teach again, but I don't know when. So packing up my office felt like packing up my career. I needed to arrange things so they are accessible again. I learned that I am a hoarder of office supplies. I filled countless recycling tubs with extra handouts, articles, assignments, and meeting notes while shredding at least three huge bags of student records. Still, I knew that some things would travel with me so I could put the things I love in my office--my jar of rocks from my parent's cabin in the UP, my fishbowl full of chocolate, my stuffed hot dog guy signed by a former student who used to be one of the racing sausages for the Brewers. 


Meanwhile, one of my colleagues has retired. She is going through many of the same tasks I am of sorting, pitching, shredding, recycling, remembering, and keeping. But it is different, I think, at the end of a career. I shared this story with her, and she suggested that I share it here as well.

Cleaning out an office can be such an overwhelming task--physically, mentally, and emotionally. It is draining.

When I was a student worker in college, I helped a French professor who was being forced to retire to clean her office after a 50-year career. She sat and cried the entire time, while I gently boxed up what I could and asked her to tell me about her favorite students and scholarship and about some of the items in her office. It took three days to whittle her office down to one carload of her most precious mementos. She sent me flowers.

Six months later, her house burned to the ground in a huge fire. I thought of the boxes that contained the distillation of her office and sent her a sympathy card. She sent me more flowers, with a note that said, "It was just stuff. I still have the memories, and that was all the stuff was for--to remind me of who I've been. I lost my stuff, and I still know who I am and who I've been."

Change of Life, part 1

I've been trying to figure out for a while how to write this post. There are some things in life that feel so momentous that it is hard to know how to process and articulate them. There are pieces of this that are like that. And while this is not a political post, it is grounded in a political-based reality.

The simplest way to say it is that I am changing jobs. But it isn't that simple, for me. Since my very first job shelving books in the children's department of the Freeport Public Library (back in its original space constructed with the help of Andrew Carnegie), I have been a public employee. Okay, I did have two summer jobs that weren't public--one as a camp counselor at my church camp and one as a receptionist for a title insurance company. I worked at the library and then at my community college as a student worker, a state university as a student worker and then as a graduate assistant, then at a community college as a professor, then at a two-year state college as a lecturer.

Although I haven't often thought of myself as a public servant, it has always been part of who I am professionally. I've known that my salary would be limited, since my institutions were accountable to taxpayers. It has always mattered to me that I am part of the army of public servants trying to make their place in the world a better place in some small way.

I've been a teacher since 1988, when I first stepped into a college classroom as a graduate assistant in charge of one writing class. After 23 years, the line between what I do and who I am has blurred. Being a teacher is part of my identity. Even during the five years I did part-time administrative work, I was still a teacher.

I have been very committed to the access to public education afforded by two-year colleges. Having started my own college experience in such a place, I have seen the transformative power of education for those who are unable to go to a different school due to financial reasons or a need to be placebound. People's lives change when they have the opportunity to explore who they are and what they think in the context of guided and structured scholarly work.

A change of jobs means, on one level, a change of self. I am staying in higher education, but it is a very different kind of position. I will be coordinating the Academic Resource Center at a private women's college. It will be a major shift in many ways: teacher to full-time administrator, public school to private school, co-ed to women's school, two-year associate degree to bachelor's and master's degrees.

I start my new job tomorrow. I don't know who I will be. At the age of 46, such a new adventure is a bit exciting and quite terrifying.

People in faculty-type positions tend to think of their careers differently than do people in many other kinds of positions in higher education. Many of my friends in student affairs work talk about building a skill set and gaining experience and then moving on in five to ten years. Faculty-type folks talk about tenure and the long haul and being in an institution over a period of their professional lifetimes, building their career by participating in important committee work, engaging in scholarship, writing grants, and getting better and better at what they do. It's a different mindset, so even I am a bit shocked that I am making this change.

So why on earth am I making the change? This is where the political-based reality comes in. As an employee of the state of Wisconsin, I was about to get socked with an extra $300 in deductions each month. Now, if I were one of those high-paid employees, I might not be able to muster much sympathy for myself. But I'm not. I'll spare the details, but my position pays less than $35,000 a year. I live in a county with a fairly high cost of living, yet this is the same salary as people in my position in other counties around the state had--so my salary has gone less far than it has for my peers in, say, Baraboo or Manitowoc.

Despite the claims that public employees haven't been affected by the economy, my husband is in an industry that was hit hard. After three job losses in two years and an extended unemployment, he is finally in a job in his industry again--but only part-time, so he continues to look for more work. Our family's finances have hit rock bottom, and we simply don't have any place in our budget to cut $300. I already do some online freelance consulting work, and I was starting to look for more.

The bottom line is that I knew I had to be open to possibilities, because Scott Walker's policies were about to have a serious negative effect on my family. So I am changing my life, and while I think it will be a good thing for me, I wouldn't have done it without his policies. So now there is another state job open (the one I just vacated), one I'm sure he'll take credit for creating.