I’ve had this blog since 2004, but I’ve never been a good blogger. My writing has been sporadic, chaotic, and unfocused. Hundreds of times, I’ve said to myself, “This is the day/month/year when you will finally lean into your writing, if for no other reason than to clean out your brain so that, perhaps, it will feel a little less messy.” That’s never happened, and my brain has just gotten messier and messier. And the world has gotten messier and messier. So, here I am again, with yet another attempt. Will it work? Probably not.
Partly, I’m whirling because, for the fourth time in my career, it feels like the life of my work/work of my life is spiraling. For the fourth time, I’m watching as a team of colleagues and friends is getting dismantled, redistributed, and “strategically” altered. Three times before, I’ve watched as my team dramatically changed, and not for the best. I know it’s popular to think that we need to be less resistant to change in higher education, but the changes I’ve witnessed have always felt like institutional short-sightedness, an inability for the university to see and value what it has, to center the people and voices who deserve to be centered, and to think outside the box when it comes to policies, procedures, and traditions. Each time, those changes were heartbreaking, and the final time, I just…left. I sought something new, and I landed where I am now. When I arrived at PSU in the summer of 2019, I kept thanking my new supervisor and colleague Robin DeRosa for giving me a “soft place to land.”
For the last six years, I’ve been lucky to be on this new team, even as we watched the larger landscape around us erode, dramatically at times. Nine months after I arrived at PSU, the pandemic followed. But I was lucky during that time because I was part of this great team. I don’t actually remember most of spring and summer of 2020 — Covid triggered massive anxiety for me. What I do remember is that the work sustained me, provided me with a focus, and connected me with people. Since then…well, if you work in higher education, you know the work has been FRAUGHT. Here in New Hampshire, it’s been PEAK FRAUGHT. And this past fall, that resulted in my most important colleague and best friend, Robin, taking a “strategic” early retirement so that she wouldn’t ultimately be retrenched.
I still have great colleagues at PSU, but a lot fewer than I did when I started…a lot fewer than I did a few months ago. I’ve always been someone who finds my way through my work in conversation and collaboration, and the loss of Robin feels like the loss of a limb (or a few limbs). I’m doing what I’ve done in the past in bad situations, trying to just put my head down and muddle through, but at least three times a day, the reality of all of…THIS just hits me hard, and I almost feel like I can’t breathe.
In the midst of all of THIS, I’m also running a three-year grant on critical and emergent instructional design that the CoLab received from the Davis Foundation (thank you, Davis Foundation!!!). It feels like it is work at the crux of everything my career has been working toward. But doing it while the University is recovering from the loss of so many important colleagues and also reimagining itself so that it can survive the almost entire divestment by the state in higher education is…A LOT. I’m grateful for the colleagues who remain at PSU and who continue to be collaborators on this work. I’m devastated by the loss of the ones who are gone. I’m horrified by the war on higher education that is being waged, and that seems to escalate every day. I’m more convinced than ever that this work matters more than it ever has.
I’m just going to try to keep writing my way through the mess. I’ll probably fail.
Image: I’ve taken up pottery as one way to help my brain survive the dismantling of the world. These were my first, failed attempts at making butter bells.
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