When Job Loss is a Blessing
How Losing my Job Brought me Back to Something I Love
The young man connected to me on Zoom and his screen was black. I heard a tentative “Hello?” and I replied. My video was running. His was not.
For a moment I had an awful flashback to the last classes I taught at the college where I spent my career and the times I taught via zoom to a class of 15 students and only one would deign to put her video on. I hoped this lesson wouldn’t be more of the same.
But a few seconds later, his video came on, and there he was: a10th grade student. I could see the top of his head down to his nose. I could have said to shift his screen but honestly, it was all just an awkward angle, and it was enough. I could see his eyes. That’s what mattered.
And our tutoring lesson began.
****
Back in May, I walked out of the college where I taught for 27 years and I never went back. I couldn’t go back if I had wanted to. I was out of a job, and it wasn’t my fault. I was at the top of my career as an Associate Professor of English, and I was unemployed. My small, private, liberal arts college ran out of money and the board and president sold it to the highest bidder. That bidder made a lot of empty claims about “taking care” of the faculty and staff, as did our president and board, but it was one of those things where weasel words and expressions were used and ultimately, quite a lot of people were left out completely. They broke our tenured contracts. They denied us any severance. They treated us coldly and harshly and quite a lot of us now have PTSD from the highly toxic workplace. So when I left, I had no hope.
It’s hard to find a blessing at all in the worst thing that could ever happen to you actually happening, but I think in time, there are things emerging that I can count as blessings. Take, for instance, the meeting with the young man I spoke of above.
Back when I started teaching, I began my career as an adjunct professor at the local community college. I taught students of all ages the basics of English grammar, sentence structure, essay writing, and technical writing. One requirement of our teaching was that we sit with each student and go over their drafts with them. I remember how absolutely gratifying it was to sit with someone and teach, one-to-one. There was so much I could accomplish by working in that way. I could individualize EVERYTHING. I could improvise my techniques on the spot. I could see the light of recognition and understanding when a student got a difficult concept. It made me feel so useful, like my gifts were doing something good for the world while I was also making ends meet.
I loved the students at the college where I spent my career, but the last few years of its existence were so bad. No one cared much anymore. Students still showed up to class, but their engagement was SO OFF. I remember an alum coming by to see me, and she said that the school felt WRONG. She said the spirit was gone. It felt empty. This was pre-pandemic. But then during the pandemic, it grew even worse. We shifted over to Zoom teaching, and surprisingly, I adapted very quickly to that, and I really liked teaching that way. I made every effort (and still do) to come off EXACTLY the way I do face-to-face. It feels very natural to me, and of course, I get to sit on my couch, with my cats. What a great way to work!
But the students were so disengaged. No one could blame them. Their school was dying. They saw what it was doing to us, too. And that’s when they started to turn off their screens. They started lying in bed during class. They started driving to the gym or even working out. They started working at their jobs while they had their video and mics off. My disembodied voice has apparently floated in many a place in the past couple of years. Once I said everyone PUT YOUR VIDEO ON NOW PLEASE, and that’s when I realized how many were at work or lying in bed during class. I pleaded with them to be present. Aside from a handful of students, they wouldn’t or couldn’t. The anxiety and depression they were feeling was off the charts. They had already checked out.
So by the time my job ended, I thought, I never want to teach again. This is horrible. I care so much about my subject and about communicating it to help others, and no one cares. They won’t even let me look at them. They won’t talk back.
But I needed to make a living, so in addition to editing and writing and other ventures, I thought, let’s try tutoring again. And that was when I realized, there’s been a blessing in losing my career.
I always said I’d NEVER work with anyone younger than college age. I said I wanted only mature, grown-up students. Well, needing to make a living changes your “nevers”, so I advertised that I’d tutor middle and high school students.
So far I just have one family I work with. They have a 10th grader and a 7th grader. The vignette above is about the 10th grader with whom I have worked several times. I’ve only helped the 7th grader once because he doesn’t get as many assignments. The result? I adore what I’m doing.
I know I lucked out. I know that getting two gifted children as my first students was pure serendipity, because I tell them something, and they get it right away. But still, since they are gifted, that means we work on polish and style and creativity. I’m having a blast tutoring. I never thought I could work with “kids”, but I was so wrong. It turns out that the infinite patience and support I had to cultivate to teach mostly disengaged college students through a pandemic has really paid off. So did the years I spent as an adjunct so long ago when I sat with people like the guy from the Chrysler plant who was nearly 60 and just always wanted to get an associate’s degree but felt like a fish out of water in school again. I think what my current experience has shown me is that the face-to-face nature of teaching was something I had not been able to engage in for so long that I didn’t realize how much I missed it.
I mean sure, it’s over Zoom, not in person, but so what? I actually think it works out great! I am still thrilled every time I see the way that both of us can edit the document simultaneously as we talk. What cool tech, right? But mostly, I feel useful again. I feel as if what I know DOES have a way to get out there into the world, even if I’m not attached to an institution. In fact, I’ve got far more freedom this way. I don’t have to teach ONLY college students, but I can teach people of all ages.
Time will tell if this works out as a way to make ends meet. I suspect it will be one of about 7 jobs I give myself as an entrepreneur trying to build my own little empire, also known as Professor of Words. But it has definitely taken the sting off the job loss.
So if you are like me and you’ve either left a job or lost your job, and you’re scrambling to try to figure out what to do, perhaps it would be a good exercise to think really far back to things you used to do, even part-time. Were there any things you did for a job or as part of a job that you REALLY liked doing, that all these years later, you think of fondly? Well if so, maybe it’s time to make your next stage in life be about THAT path. Maybe that’s always been your true calling, and it took a tragedy for you to see it.