#unemployed professors

[probablygayattorneys]

Had a job interview for a job I reeeeeally wanted and was, like, planning out my outfit the night before but I think I might have also just fully lost my mind midway through.

[nic0-r0bs]

"it's easy to forget..."

Yeah... ehm... sure... so easy to forget...

*starts to panic

*My dissertation for High School finals on Tolkien looks at me

*My Bachelor Degree thessis on Kullervo and the Children of Húrin looks at me

*My Master Degree in Linguistics and Translation looks at me

Yeah, I definitely didn't study translation all my life because I've been obsessed with Tolkien's academic research since I was 8.

(translating Seneca in high school definitely gave my the final push, but I'm sure the Professor would totally aporove)

It’s easy to forget JRR Tolkien was a fairly prolific academic translator with an interest in early medieval literature and philology. It’s so inspiring that he found time to write The Hobbit while fighting for his life over Beowulf.

[gaeiies]

done with my master's thesis. didn't think this day would ever come.

[beetledrink]

i had to back out of the BG3 fandom almost altogether because i felt like no one else was seeing the characters i was seeing. wym professor daddy dom Gale? what the fuck? that’s my unemployed hobosexual boyfriend who sleeps on my couch bc he got fired for having an inappropriate relationship with his employer and now he goes “babe i need you to get me a snickers so bad. no i can’t myself. my blood sugar. babe please”. and i get him the snickers

[vanilla-voyeur]

Piggybacking off the 10% of jobs that care what school you went to. Those jobs only care if you went to an elite university. They see some no name state school as equal prestige as your community college. The people considering community college aren't also looking at Harvard.

Community college is not lesser, you can still get a good job, and you can transfer to a 4-year school with significantly less debt than the people who started as a freshman. Heck I know someone who started at community college and got their PhD at Stanford so community college doesn't necessarily lock out the fancy schools.

every year we have to say it

[srdcovka]

1st lit test on tuesday lets all join hands

[suboficialflores]

Once upon a time I was a Spanish lecturer at a university. They trusted me with 100-300 level classes (lol wild)

Then I was pulled into a Title IX investigation that really had nothing to do with me, and like an idiot I did what I thought was the right thing

If a professor rapes a student and another professor asks you to testify on behalf of the student, you may get fired as retaliation (even though that’s illegal)

Last I knew, the accused professor is still tenured

[beenovel]

Anyway last week my professor told the class "coworkers will put up with poor technical skills but they won't put up with weird" and after class I just went and sat in my car and cried bc how am I supposed to survive if I still don't seem "normal" even though I've been doing behavioral therapy since first grade but masking hurts so goddamn bad that I'm only doing two classes a week rn but I'm still falling apart and barely functioning every day and barely getting my work turned in bc i come home from class and collapse for days at a time and its just not fair, its not fair, why do other people get to be the normal, why do jobs get to be easy for other people, why are 66% of autistics unemployed/underemployed its not FAIR

[t4t4t]

The Liberal is always INNOCENT; he has nothing to do with anything; he never acts:

“God forbid! I didn’t send for the Police! I didn’t intend any VIOLENCE! I just didn’t want an Unobjective Person in My Department. If he was jailed or shot by the Police, THAT’S NOT MY CONCERN; I’M COMPLETELY INNOCENT! I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THAT, and in any case, that merely shows what kind of person HE really was.”

The Liberal’s project is to exclude the radical from society, but he does not take responsibility for the project; he realizes his project in stages, but he is only responsible for the “innocent” first stage. OTHERS DO THE REST. The Liberal merely initiates the process, and is not responsible for what the others do.

The Reactionary hits the radical directly; the Liberal does not do his own hitting. The Liberal merely PROVOKES the radical until he responds to the provocation, and when he responds, THE COPS GET THE RADICAL. The Liberal maintains his good conscience: HE didn’t act--the radical acted; HE didn’t repress the radical--the cops did. THE LIBERAL IS ALWAYS INNOCENT; his only desire is peace and quiet.

The Reactionary throws out a radical and then has him arrested for Loitering or Conspiracy or outside Agitation if the radical returns to fight; the Reactionary “eggs on” and harasses until the radical is provoked to hit back, and then has him arrested for Assault and Battery; the Reactionary tries to exclude the radical from any sources of income in order to have him locked up as a thief. To the Reactionary, the radical is ALREADY A CRIMINAL WHEN HE EXPRESSES HIS THOUGHTS.

The Liberal knows just as well as the Reactionary that “The cops’ll get ‘im”; HE COUNTS ON THE COPS TO PROTECT HIS PEACE AND QUIET; but, as Rafferty repeatedly observed, THE LIBERAL DOESN’T WANT TO SEE THE COPS WHO PROTECT HIM.

The Liberal can be compared to the Medieval Church. The Church excommunicated a heretic, but did not itself put the heretic to death. The Civil Authority, the Secular Authority, took charge of the heretic’s body. The Church was innocent; the Civil Authorities and the Executioner were the ones responsible for physical extermination. The excommunicators of the Church maintained clean consciences.

Thus also the Liberal: All he does is to excommunicate the radical, to exclude him “spiritually”; the Civil Authorities do the rest. At every single step he applies systematic terror and violence, and at every single step he manages to maintain his clean conscience.

The Liberal ALREADY KNOWS that when his “Leftist Colleague” is an unemployed radical he will do something for which it will be legitimate to throw him in jail, but the Liberal doesn’t want to be aware that HIS PEACE AND QUIET ARE MAINTAINED THROUGH TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE. In other words, the Liberal’s weapons are the same as the reactionary’s; the only difference between them is that the Liberal doesn’t look, and has a good conscience. He’s “tolerant,” he “reads radical literature,” he’s the “only one who talks to radicals,” he’s MORAL in every single way; he goes out of his way to “help radicals”; he’ll do everything for radicals which will help him keep his good conscience WHILE HE CONTINUES TO RELY ON TERROR AND VIOLENCE.

Liberal professors and students whose situations can only be maintained through terror and violence, through systematic psychological and physical murder, advertise “Make Love Not War.” Liberal students who have ALREADY CHOSEN to help maintain the dominant project when their time comes, are busy “accumulating” large “stocks” of good conscience while they can, while their “new styles of life” do not yet conflict with their future “responsibilities.”

Liberals are not “moderate.” That’s their own self-image. They’re extremists, but unlike reactionaries, THEY’RE EXTREMISTS WITH GOOD CONSCIENCES. Their instruments are not “ideas”; their instruments are TERROR and VIOLENCE. But unlike lynchers, THE LIBERALS TURN THEIR EYES AWAY to maintain their innocence.

People are EXCLUDED; thousands of people are OUTSIDERS; yet the Liberals who forced them out are TOTALLY GUILTLESS, and have the illusion that they are the ones who are “sympathetic” to the Radical Students, the Emotionally What-Have-You Students, the Hippie Students. The Liberal who is the first to move WHENEVER SOMEONE CROSSES ONE OF HIS LINES at the same time “contributes generously” to “Left-wing organizations” and “is against the war in Vietnam.” He is a supporter of all GOOD THINGS; he is a GOOD PERSON; he’s the BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD. He is able to accept physical and psychological TERROR and VIOLENCE WITH A GOOD CONSCIENCE AND CHRISTIAN MORALS.

Kalamazoo, February 1969

I Accuse This Liberal University of Terror and Violence, Fredy Perlman

[star-anise]

are we talking about broke therapists yet?

I've been out of things for a couple of years now, which is why I'm willing to talk about it, and maybe the pandemic has helped things a little, but holy shit the counselling and psychotherapy field is not equipped to help its practitioners in the gig economy.

Of all my interests and talents, I pursued a degree in psychology because being a therapist is supposed to be a safe, stable, well-paid job. Every therapist I met who was registered before 2008 worked and lived under that assumption. And oh boy are all the fee structures--registration, supervision, continuing education, conferences--set up for that scenario.

After getting my Master's, I struggled like hell to get a job. It was especially bad because to get my license, I needed a supervisor to take me on. To take me on, most supervisors wanted me to already have a caseload and client base. To get a caseload and client base, I needed a job.

Friends: Every single job I heard back on wanted me to have my license before I could even land an interview.

Professors and career advisors and professional development specialists all advised me very earnestly to just keep cold-calling people on the supervision list, and it began to feel a lot like my parents' friends telling me to hit the bricks and hand out resumes. That's what worked for them, right?

I finally got a supervisor who agreed to take me on, and I'd be able to use her clinic for advertising and workspace, and we were doing the paperwork to send in with my registration, when she called me up and said, "Is this job going to be your only source of income? If you're trying to depend on getting clients and building your practice for your basic needs, this is not going to work out. This has to be something you're doing on top of a basic salary. Okay, so you're not working anywhere else right now? I'm sorry, I can't move forward with this."

Even once I landed a supervisor and a job building my own private practice, I struggled. I have ADHD and am not great at self-promotion, so trying to do all my own advertising, scheduling, bookkeeping, billing, and records management (on top of counselling) was an enormous strain. One my bosses, supervisors, and other senior professionals watched with a slightly critical eye, but consoled me about because in their early days, their clinics had had business managers, receptionists, filing clerks, and accountants, and getting used to doing everything online yourself was a bit of a learning curve, wasn't it?

I counted my pennies very carefully, because I had to pay my supervisor roughly $180 for their services every 6 hours of in-person counselling I did. This meant that to break even I had to charge my clients an average of about $30 (plus room rental and service fees) an hour--and my clients, being people with complex trauma, were frequently poor, disabled, unemployed, and had no health benefits, so even $10 or $20 a session was a lot for them.

Maybe it would have been easier if I could have taken some of those nice comfortable organization positions where they find clients and funding for you and you work 40 hours a week and get benefits and a pension, but I had to be disabled into the bargain, so working 40 hours a week just isn't possible for me. I start passing out from stress and exhaustion. Older colleagues gave me serious-faced advice about approaching my employer and asking them for some flexibility and accommodation in my schedule, and I tried to explain across the gap between us that employers simply did not hire me if I made the slightest noise about the workload. They weren't going to invest in me as a person; they were hiring 40 units of work a week, and if I wouldn't do it there were a dozen applicants after me who would.

At one point I broke down enough to email my licensing body because the Annual General Meeting/Professional Development Conference was coming up, and I wanted to attend, but I could not produce $500 to do it with. Was there some kind of way I could attend anyway? I felt ashamed to have to ask, and then absolutely mortified when the response came from the organization president, who needed to personally sign off on me being too poor to attend the single most important event in my profession's calendar year.

I honestly felt so ashamed all the time at how I was apparently failing to be a successful therapist, failing to be rich and successful, and every time I mentioned it around mentors and bosses, I could feel myself shrinking from a person to a problem to be solved. My closest therapist-friends and I have reflected on how much more difficult, poorly-paid and underworked, our various career starts have been than we were ever warned about. About the classmates and coworkers who couldn't get disability exceptions when they fell behind in their registration requirements, or burned out and left the field, or dropped their registrations and took up as life coaches, or moved their whole family somewhere exceptionally remote or rural because it was the only good job available, or worked for some godforsaken app skirting the bounds of malpractice like BetterHelp.

I like those conversations, because I feel less like an absolute fuck-up in them. There's less "Hey Lis, you were so talented in grad school, I really admired you, what are you doing now?" "Oh, I, uh... am professionally disabled, so I get government benefits, and I... sell embroidery patterns on Etsy now."

My own therapist kept asking if and when I felt like going back to being a counsellor, and I finally told him: I don't, actually. I don't want to go back and do it like I was doing it before. It was a profession I loved to the depths of my soul, and it profoundly did not love me back. I can't even imagine what would have to change, in me or it, to make it have a space in it that could fit me.

All of which I was way too scared to admit to at the time, because the more I let people know I was struggling, the more they hinted that maybe I just wasn't in a place in my life where this was a job I could do, and I needed to take a little break and wait to come back until money and disability just weren't issues for me anymore.

Eventually my cups of doubt and exhaustion did overflow, and I quit. I'm here now, living a much different life. And at the very least, all my years of helping people in bad life situations set me up perfectly for my own. I already knew what form to fill out for financial assistance, which student clinics to access for mental health support, and which government agency would, if pressed, cough out pharmacy coverage for the genuinely destitute. It gave me that much.

I hope this is just me being in extraordinary circumstances, sitting at the intersections of a few different shitty life situations that most people skip right past. Because it's on one level comforting, but another deeply infuriating, if I'm not, and I've just missed it or we've just all been too afraid to admit it to each other.

[bwobgames]

“My father’s brother, my parents didn’t like him much, but he’s still family so he would visit us every once in a while.”

“To their disappointment, my uncle lacked any of their ambition”

“You might see me as lesser for this, Natalia, but I wasn’t born into riches. I was born in the middle of the way”

“My parents were very much set into escaping a low class life. They reached incredible heights for how little they had at the start”

“And of course, I was part of that plan as well”

“The best education they could afford. The best manners they could teach. The fanciest of talents they could think of. I was brought up a perfect little lady”

“We were going to live a good life, so we worked hard”

“My uncle did not follow that logic”

.

.

.

.

“Shouldn’t you be at home by now, little flower? Or were you out playing?”

“I was at Violin practice.

Are you drinking again, Uncle Jacinto”

“What? Of course not! Is your dad saying I’m some sort of alcoholic?”

“No…”

“So he is.”

“Mari, you shouldn’t get between mindless adult bickering, this is between your dad and me, okay?”

“He loves me at the end of the day”

“Are you sure?”

“Haha, you’re so mean!”

“My god, does your mother love tightening that hair. Doesn’t it hurt?”

“…It’s fine. It doesn’t get tangled that way.”

“So it hurts?”

“…I don’t want to wear braids instead…”

“Well, what if you could brush your own hair? And do your hair in the way you wanted?”

“You could dye it even!”

“The only people who paint their hair are unruly women and parasitic unemployed people”

“Oh wow”

“It’s alright baby, I know you have a heart in there somewhere”

“I’m polite!”

“You probably are! That’s good!”

“But I want you to know, if you ever feel like living a little, you will always have me a call away, okay?”

“You’ll introduce me to drugs?”

“I don’t do drugs!”

"At that point I merely brushed him off, my uncle is a low life who will never achieve anything and its not worth it, or so dad said."

"Uncle Jacinto is nothing but a bad influence. He will never be anyone in life. He will never be happy"

(“But then, why was his smile so bright?”)

"Before entering university, he died. A car ran him over when he was biking."

"I dyed my hair."

"Partly out of curiosity, a small desire I’ve been having. The need to experiment."

"Of course, I had to do a million excuses to my mom for it, it would make me stand out to my professors, it would make my intelligence contrast harder, it was only temporary so it’s really no big deal-"

"It was glorious."

"I looked at the mirror and couldn’t stop starring."

A mere impulse became a euphoria that she had never felt before

Unbeknownst to her, a feeling inside her had been growing. Festering wildly through the years.

A hunger.

She sees something in the mirror.

“Took you a while”

“Blue suits you, Little flower”

She likes blue.

She was never that close to her uncle, but at that moment, she felt a need for him.

A need for guidance, free of any hidden plans.

A need for warm words and a bright smile.

Someone to tell her she’s doing the right thing.

<-PREV START NEXT->

[ledetlore]

Once Upon a Pub Night

Silly OUAW AU

Setting: England. The Krew does run a shitty carnival at one point. Mostly the same, with some English additives for flavours. This can be read as human!au but it's funnier if they're all still fantasy creatures.

Gricko Grimgrin:

Post-punk pub dad =- calls everyone ‘darling’, ‘gorgeous’ or ‘love’. Somehow knows your dad ‘from a gig a couple years back’. Never completed school. Employed (maybe?) – does something to afford the blunts he smokes behind Sainsbury’s and drink all day. Probably on benefits for a ‘gammy knee’. Proud divorced dad of one girl – she’s his perfect angel, his Ex-Wife is in Majorca with the alimony. Always dressed in baggy joggers and a ratty band shirt/ratty printed joke shirt with absolutely ruined converse trainers. Has shitty tattoos done by his drunk mate from college. Spends his money on beer and his kid. Runs the pub barbeque in summer. Body mods for days. Hates Thatcher as much as Scabatha.

Morning Frost:

Chinese exchange student, went to oxford because he couldn’t get into Cambridge, staying with a stout catholic family. Early thirties and a scholar, wants to be a professor of Psychiatry. Reads in Café Nero and talks to no one. Always spotted with a massive backpack and a massive flask. Got bullied out of the Chinese Society because his mandarin was pure shit, and he only spoke Cantonese. Judges everyone on his dorm floor for being loud and going clubbing when he doesn’t. Has a cochlear implant and takes it off when he’s sick of listening to people. Gricko learned sign language so he couldn’t escape.

Torbek:

Unemployed. Pathetic. Hangs out in ratty tracksuits and smokes cigarette butts he finds in the bins. Lives in Bedford. Somehow has a network of homeless guys. Couch Surfer Supreme. Great guy. Likes to get a tesco meal deal and sit in the park with a cider can. Feeds ducks. Accidentally scares kids when he’s just trying to get a sarnie. Everyone in town knows him and half love him and half think he’s rabble. Can get the fuck down at a club though.

Gideon Coal:

Still from Texas?? Was kidnapped by a gang as a kid, managed to get out and away in England and then proceeded to find a way to make it. Lived in Manchester for a while. Wears Man United merch around Man City supporters and vice versa to start fights. He uses his accent to pull girls and Gricko gets uppity about it. He gets called a yank and people love when he’s around. Drinks whiskey in bars but only the cheap shit. Spends his time wearing jeans and wifebeaters in the dead of winter. Has an old zip-up hoodie with a bunch of patches from Gricko, or a leather biker jacket (he has no bike). Carries around shiny stickers to put on people’s suits when they’re not looking.

Kremy LeCroux:

Lived in Brighton mostly. Has a good RP accent, but mostly speaks like he’s from Hertfordshire. When he’s drunk his true self comes to life – he’s from Sheffield lads. He wears a three-piece suit daily but looks gay as hell. Dresses nice but has to get it from Charity Shops. He gets his accessories from Unikorn. All of his make-up is stolen from Claires and Primark. He’s got a lifetime ban from WHSmith for stealing shitty romance books. Waterstones hates to see this man on a Wednesday afternoon sat in the corner. Does drag but used to be a stripper in his early twenties. Toxic Situationship with his old boss.

Hootsie:

Random kid that’s always with them, Gricko's daughter. Dressed in pink velvet tracksuits and has offbrand uggs. Runs around with her big autistic eyes and gets pound coins from pub regulars for the sweet machine. Draws in the corner and sleeps in the booths when she gets tired. Has run three men out the pub. Besties with the Barmaids, gets free J2O’s when she sits at the bar to do her homework. Gricko lets her listen to music she probably shouldn’t and watch Jeremy Kyle on the weekends. In the park afterschool everyday to sit silently on the swings. Does ballet class and Gymnastics. Selective mute but when she speaks you LISTEN. AAC device on LOCK.

[mintmoth]

Oh yeah here's some rambling from last night on twt-

I know like, the only canon info we have on about roughly how old Guzma is is that he has to be over 20 because that's the cut off limit for being a trial captain, so I know a lot of people put him at being in his early to mid twenties, but I'm like no. It's funnier if he's pushing thirty

Like Kukui is around the same age and he's out here with his own home that also doubles as a research lab, a wife, a steady job- that works so well for being around that age! But it makes Guzma's situation so much more like "damn dude you live like this??" LIKE THIS IS JUST WHAT YOUR EARLY THIRTIES IS LIKE some people's biggest accomplishments are getting married and having a good job, some people's accomplishments are making a really good sandwich last week

Also the idea of Guzma pushing thirty is extra funny to me because all the team skull kids think he's the coolest guy and actively look up to him and it's like, he's a man living in a dilapidated house who made a whole ass throne in his bedroom. Something wrong with this one. He's like that "sorry sweet grandmas who wanna be around me, I've gotta go hang out with the unemployed older cousin who wants nothing to do with me" meme but with all of team skull like YEAH THERES OUR COOL BOSS and he's just like stop screaming I need to microwave a burrito. He's out here trying to fix the tv by punching it and they're taking notes and nodding like he's a professor giving a lecture

Like real talk it's so easy for me to get swept up in angsty ideas for him because he really DOES have so much going on in that department, but also he's a fucking goofball literally he has a goddamn throne in his bedroom and unironically says "greetings, cowering public"

[enbysiriusblack]

I don't know if you've answered this before but what jobs do you think the marauders would have if there wasn't a war

i feel like i have answered this before but oh well, imma give several options i can see

james:

stay at home dad

kids teacher (like yknow wizarding world has no primary school so for parents that work, they'd drop the kids to james who teaches them basic magical theory/maths/english/etc)

quidditch player

quidditch coach

transfiguration professor (tho this would have to be like after mcgonagall becomes the head)

sirius:

mechanic (for both muggles & wizards)

care of magical creatures professor

unemployed & just does random shit that he feels like (mostly hanging out with james)

unspeakable

dueller

remus:

defence against the dark arts professor (a given)

historian

boggart specialist

farmer (i just love farmer remus, okay)

peter:

unspeakable (i think it'd be funny)

barkeeper

executioner

obliviator

lily:

mediwitch

physician

potions professor

potioneer

(ik those are fairly similar but i like her in medical fields or potions fields)

[julpernulper]

HAHAHAHHAHHHHHHHHH guess who’s so good at organic chemistry that they have a job lined up?

ME!

my organic chem prof was talking last semester about needing a tutor and i was gonna apply, and then procrastinated, so i was gonna email around today. i check my school email and turns out. i have emails from NOT JUST my professor but ALSO the lady in charge of my school’s tutoring center ASKING ME IF I WAS INTERESTED! YES!!!!! unemployed no moreeeee

[hyperlexichypatia]

I’ve found a lot of your posts about autonomy and infantilization helpful.

Do you have any advice for how to break out of self-infantilization, especially when you’ve been sheltered?

I grew up with strict parents and always thought I’d figure out how to be confident and independent when I went off to college.

But for a number of different reasons (including the pandemic) , I socially isolated myself and talked myself out of going out and trying new things, ex. I put off driving until I was 23, which limited where I could go.

And now for financial reasons I live with my parents while looking for a job.

I feel very immature for my age, like I don’t know how to start making decisions for myself without always asking for advice from someone else. I feel like I’m struggling with the transition to independence that most people go through from 15-18.

I can relate to some of this, and yeah, the aspect of financial and material dependence makes it difficult. One thing I would point out is that there's noting wrong with asking for advice, including from your parents (if you trust their advice!). Being autonomous doesn't mean figuring everything out on your own. Outside perspectives are good! But if you're asking ME for advice, I would suggest just being mindful of the difference, in your mindset, between asking for advice and asking for permission.

I think a lot of young people, even when they physically separate from their parents, get stuck in the "needing An Adult's Permission" mindset, and basically turn their boss/landlord/professor/doctor/therapist/partner into their substitute parent. And then if you do live with your parents as an adult (which I did! I still do, despite interludes of being elsewhere!), it's even easier to slip into the childhood mentality of submitting and needing permission. And it can take time and effort to break out of that mentality.

So I think my advice for keeping your advice-seeking from slipping into self-infantalization would be: -seek advice from multiple sources and use your own judgment to filter through it -seek advice from sources other than older people and authority figures. seek advice from people younger than you! -interact with people both older and younger than you as peers. tumblr is great for this! I never check anyone's ages, so I interact with 15 year olds and 50 year olds equally! I volunteer to be your middle-aged friend! -try to decouple money from decision-making in your mind. this is hard, because we live in a classist, capitalist, economically exploitative world. this was hard for me as a broke, dependent, unemployed young adult -- to break free of "I'm not a real adult yet because I don't have money" (an attitude actively encouraged by my family at the time) to "I don't have money to do most of the things I want, but of the things I can do, the things I don't actually need money for, I deserve to be in charge of." -if you don't have kids (you don't mention having any, so I'm assuming you don't), go make friends with people your age who have kids. offer to babysit, if that's something you're into. it's hard to think "I'm baby" when your peers have actual babies. That's all I can think of for now, but I mean, this is really hard. Life transitions are always hard, but we live in a world that makes this especially hard. And expensive. And that constantly lies to us about it. So just. Stay strong. Be yourself. All that good stuff. Oh, and one final thing: As you get older (which is inevitable, because time passes) do not forget everything you learned about ageism and youthlib. Older people have such selective memories and lack of empathy for their younger selves. To fight ageism, we have to align with our own younger selves.