1.

September 9th, 2024

Some days, I think I would enjoy a more normal job, but I don’t really have complaints other than I feel like an outsider here [in the academy] most of the time. I think that will be true of any job, and I will always go out of my way to find other outsiders. I know I want to be a parent, and I think being a caregiver to our child will be fulfilling. I am afraid of what risks I won’t be able to take anymore. I can feel myself being squeezed into roles of worker, husband, etc. in ways that are unfamiliar. On one hand, I am cared for and people who care about me want me to have a stable and successful life (read: career). On the other, I feel profoundly frustrated with the conditions under which I am expected to be stable and successful and do not feel that not acting [to change those conditions] does anything to secure the future for myself and my loved ones. I cannot just dream of a world where this is not the case—I feel that I must actively pursue it. I am afraid of what this will mean for my marriage, for my work, for my ability to appear sane and rational…I accept that refusal in place will always look like self-sabotage. I accept that insanity is necessary when genocide, ecocide, and epistemicide are normalized. I fear life beyond the norms of the colonialist, imperialist, capitalist society, of course I do! I was raised to strive to be a ruler and a worker and a voice of “reason.” I have seen beyond that and it requires insane amounts of trust in the most literal sense: to trust that care is natural and competition is unnatural is terrifying. Every narrative I have been fed says if I do not fight my brother I will always know scarcity, but that’s only true if I submit to a perpetual dissatisfaction instead of advocating for our mutual benefit. For each of us to have enough to satisfy our desire—to be content, and for others to be content as well.

2.

September 11th, 2024

I don’t feel “qualified” to help people navigate conflict and discomfort, but I do feel capable and ready to learn as I go. I am trying to be comfortable with not having all the answers and still doing my best, with the knowledge that I will need to apologize and course-correct when I am wrong. I believe people who are taken advantage of or overpowered know the way to their own liberation, and so do those who have caused harm. I think facilitating this type of learning is my calling. Sharing my natural gifts of curiosity and non-judgment with the people around me makes me feel like I am doing the things I am meant to do. Yesterday was Mary Oliver’s birthday, and when I think about her life I feel like it will be possible for me to do everything I am meant to do in this one short life. The call to be present in my own life is one that I am heeding and I don’t need to worry so much about if it’s enough.

3.

September 12th, 2024

I’m finding ways to remember who I want to be: a teacher, a naturalist, an artist. There are no words to adequately describe the feeling of watching people choose to care for each other, but it is a gift and a privilege to offer the gentlest prompts and see compassion spring to life within someone. Given the time and space to do so, I believe people will try in earnest to care for each other. Capitalism ramps up the pace and dissolves the places that could provide room for exploration of this capacity we have to respond to the suffering of ourselves and others. What happens if I measure the effectiveness of my resistance to this system by how slowly I can move through each stage of grief, each stage of transition, each stage of desire? What would unfold in the moments between now and then, in the meanwhiles? Slowing down lets the consequences play out with enough time to pivot.

4.

November 10th, 2024

I’ll finish the damn PhD. I’m tired of being bullied out of places, relationships, ideas. I believe in my dignity and I don’t have to plead for it. I will proceed as if the system works how I want it to and challenge it to bend, to slow, to work at the speed I am capable of functioning at while maintaining my sanity. I will be honest about my limits (Note from the future: I am aware the statements are contradictory). I won’t say what people want to hear just so they can hear it.

5.

November 28th, 2024

I’m taking a break from work for the three days Emory and I have called our honeymoon to Letchworth State Park. I am trying to be gentle with myself for not finishing my quals proposal yet. There is time, there is always time, and I am only finishing this degree on my terms. I deserve rest, so I take it. I deserve grace, so I give it to myself. I will find peace in whatever I do—I have learned to be aware of my authority over my own life and can uphold that, especially in situations where people profit from my labor. I want a job that values my skill at teaching, problem solving, and being in meaningful relationship with the people around me more than those things are currently valued in my program. I want to be a father, I want to give birth. I want to make a home where everyone feels welcome and loved. I want these things more than I want a PhD and will do what is needed to get them.

In the fall of 2024, I was in the third year of my PhD in biology. I had started on this path because I loved teaching, learning about the natural world, and studying science, its methods, and its various epistemologies. Despite having to switch labs due to my advisor suddenly becoming unwell, my research was exciting, my students were about as enthusiastic about learning as I would expect 18-year-old pre-meds to be, and I made lots of very good friends in the program. I had my qualms with higher ed, but I had every intention of completing my doctorate and teaching at the local colleges. After all, every job has something unideal about it, so what was the corporatization of the university in the grand scheme of things? I could get a paycheck doing something I loved and move on.

But each semester, new parts of the ugly underbelly of higher ed were revealed: the state engaged in bad-faith bargaining with our union, so I had to work on an expired contract; the trend of capital investment taking precedent over properly staffing departments meant my job prospects post-graduation were becoming increasingly limited; and the violence I witnessed my friends experience at the hands of police for expressing pro-Palestinian views haunted me every time I walked past the field next to my office where it took place. I started feeling anxious all the time, I couldn’t focus on my work, and I started wondering if this was even a system to which I wanted to contribute. I had spent years learning how to speak the language of higher ed, how to navigate the complex bureaucracies, and how to best support my students, but still I wondered if this was the kind of education I wanted to receive.

Outside of teaching and research, I was helping our Palestine solidarity group build infrastructure for resolving conflicts, strengthening relationships, and supporting each other emotionally and spiritually. I started holding peer support calls and heard even more stories of students and workers experiencing harm at the hands of their universities. Emory and I were also beginning to take our family planning conversations more seriously, and every time I thought about being a pregnant person and a parent at my university, I was filled with dread.

During this time, I was also auditing a BioArt class, in which I learned the term disidentification, described by Rosi Braidotti as “loss of familiar habits of thought and representation in order to pave the way for creative alternatives.” I found this definition in my journal as I was transcribing the entries, and in hindsight, I can see my disidentification with higher ed playing out over the months before I finally decided I would leave. Especially as the new administration takes aim at education and research, including through abducting graduate students/postdocs like Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri, I hope that others considering leaving the academy might find some comfort in these journal entries—that it makes taking the leap slightly less terrifying. Your gifts are valuable. Your time is precious. Only you can decide what to do with them.

Note: Journal entries have been lightly edited for clarity and length.