Glad to Be Fired

~ Clarissa

I’m now kind of really happy I’m getting fired. Because get this. Like you probably know, I don’t get to teach literature. It’s a very bizarre situation where everything I research and publish is aggressively not in demand where I work. My teaching is completely divorced from my research. This means that I never, not for one day, was what I went into this profession to be. I wanted to be that person who goes into class to talk about books, and we analyze them together, and I go “so on page 126 when she says XYZ, what does it mean?” And I had to accept that I’ll never be that.

I made my peace with this and it’s fine. I thought, hey, maybe I wouldn’t even be good at it. I never tried, so I might just as well turn out to be a total fail as a literature professor.

Today, however, I was invited to give a guest lecture about my new book at a university that has a graduate program and that does teach literature. I decided to talk about the novel that’s currently my weakest. Where’s the fun in going in with something where you know you’ll shine? No, I chose the book for which I don’t have that much enthusiasm or much to say.

And I absolutely slayed. I finally got to do the “let’s go to page 93” and it was glorious. And guess what? I now know what I want to say about this novel in my book. Talking about it with students, listening to their comments and answering questions really helped. Only to think how much I would have published if I could do this regularly.

So now I’m thinking, fuck this job, you know? It’s not even that good. I finally get forced to look for something better, something where I can finally do what I always wanted to. Sixteen years of telling myself that it’s fine that I don’t get to teach literature, that I don’t have a community, and for what? I get pathetically, slavishly attached to the communities of scholars I sometimes meet at conferences. It’s embarrassing but I sit there looking at photos from back in 2018 when I was part of such a group in Germany for a week. It happened twice in my whole life, in October of 2018 and January of 2023. And then today. Without you, wonderful people on this blog, I would be completely alone in my intellectual process.

So yeah, I have just experienced a big, unexpected awakening, and I’m feeling great relief. Now I need to go and rewrite the chapter on that book based on my new insights.

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Published by Clarissa

35 thoughts on “Glad to Be Fired”

  1. Firing tenured faculty is still very difficult–especially at a public school. What is more likely is that they fire faculty on non-tenure track contracts (adjuncts and full time instructional staff) and increase your teaching load. Fully tenured faculty can get terminated if departments are eliminated or if the school declares a financial crisis, of course. But I believe that the most likely scenario is that they will make you teach more. (I’ve seen this happen at many schools in my geographical area). So you may want to quit. But termination is probably fairly unlikely.

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    1. Yes, my whole department is being eliminated. I asked the administration directly if tenured faculty will be fired and the answer was, yes. I asked again, and the answer was again, yes. I was told verbatim, “the entire budget is in salaries and the most expensive workers are Full Professors, so we are looking to let them go first.”

      So it’s not me inventing this. We are being told directly that this is the play to eliminate tenured jobs.

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  2. That’s the spirit. Embrace change. Sometimes one only needs a little push, and in a while we find that we are not on the ground, we’re airborne…

    Wishing you all the best from my little corner on the periphery of Central Europe. I’m also waiting for my big chance and it won’t be long, I trust.

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  3. That’s a good attitude Clarissa.

    Also think about all the incredible people who went on to do incredible things after quitting or being forced out of their comfort zones.

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  4. That’s good you’re okay with changing jobs, I’d be terrified to lose my job. I hate job interviews and the idea that you have to network to find jobs, to me it sounds like using people to get you stuff. When I think of networking, I think of people here in NJ who get jobs because they know the mayor or some other official poo-bah in the town government. To me, that sounds vaguely unethical since an incompetent person might get hired. Plus I barely socialize and I don’t like people, I’d rather get a job on my own merits than kiss someone’s ass to get one

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    1. Yeah, job market is bleh. I particularly dread asking for recommendation letters because I’m unsociable and detest networking.

      If anybody on here knows my work and wants to write a letter, please email me. Or get in touch on academia.edu

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    1. Many professors at my university (and other schools in Illinois) are getting fired at this moment. The Dem governor mismanaged the state into the ground and we exist in the environment of endless budget cuts that attempt to correct his mistakes. And it never works but that’s another issue.

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  8. When I was in the military I got “relieved” (military jargon for “fired”) from an assignment in Illinois, and it turned out to be A WONDERFUL LIFE-CHANGING AVENT!

    I was living in Southern California (a great place live in the mid-1970s when I joined the service) and had intended to return there when I retired. As a result of my being relieved in Illinois, I was given a new post in Southern Arizona, and discovered that the hot, dry Arizona desert climate was just as good as that of Southern California without the overcrowding, high taxes, and crazy Democratic politics that had started overtaking California and have steadily gotten much worse since I lived there.

    So I ended up retiring in Arizona instead and love living here! (If the idiot who fired me were still alive, I’d send him a heartfelt “Thank You!” note.)

    Dreidel

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    1. Thank you. I actually think so, too. I brought three new languages to my department – Swahili, Ukrainian and ASL. I brought new courses in translation and interpretation. I brought great speakers, including Jonathan. This was all good and I’m glad I did it. I’m sad that the university is dying, though.

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  10. I am sure it will all work out well for you, Clarissa! FWIW a couple of year ago, I went through a similar transition from my long-held full professor job. I was on leave doing research at a company part-time, and after the customary one year of leave, the university made me choose one job or the other. I chose the company, and I haven’t looked back since!

    Like you, I feel my research is so much more relevant now, and I work with so much better people than my former academic colleagues. The resignation gave me a shot of new energy that I never thought I’d have in my mid-life. I have no doubt it will be even better for you, Clarissa, and you will emerge out of this an even better researcher and scholar. My best wishes for you.

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  11. So your university will no longer offer courses in foreign languages? Not even basic language courses for beginners?

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    1. Illinois corruption is just beyond anything. And it’s funny because the deep red areas of the state look like perfect little slices of paradise. Clean, orderly, no crime to speak of, quiet, calm, peaceful existence. Once you go towards the blue areas, though, it all falls apart.

      Must be a coincidence.

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      1. “Illinois corruption… because the deep red areas of the state look like perfect little slices of paradise”

        “Nine nations” model for the win!

        Chicago is in the Foundry (old industrial heartland) and is traditionally a port city (I won’t say that ports and elevated corruption go hand in hand…. but….. they kind of go hand in hand). The Foundry was also a migration destination both international (esp European, esp Southern and Eastern Europe) and internal (the two Great Migrations of African Americans from South to North). So a money hub, a place people go to enrich themselves and lots of opportunities for shady business via the port.

        Most of the rest of Illinois is in the Breadbasket. With a very different history and makeup. The Breadbasket was the ‘social ratifier’ of the country as in the old saying ‘Will it play in Peoria?’. The Breadbasket was primarily agricultural and has fewer and less exciting cities. European migration was mostly Germans and Scandinavians who wanted better farmland. It’s the Nation that traditionally has the best local government and the highest civic engagement (and the worst food by a wide margin).

        Extreme Southern Illinois abuts St. Louis which is on the border area with Dixie (the South) which has its own challenges.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America

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        1. I cross the border between IL and MO several times a week, and these are definitely different states. You can feel it, and I don’t just mean in the billboards that atan at the opposite sides of the state border screaming “Cheap, easy abortions!” and “Don’t murder unborn babies!” at each other. Missourans call me “Miss Olga”, even complete strangers. While Illinoisans call me nothing at all and prefer not to speak.

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          1. “Illinoisans call me nothing at all and prefer not to speak”

            Was their Finnish immigration in your part of Illinois? They are famous for not talking much. Though lots of Northern Europeans have the same attitude – you know who you are, why make a big deal about it?

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