The Stages of Grief - They Apply to Professions, too.
The stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They do not always happen in order, or even necessarily at all. Sometimes you skip one for years only to have it come back with a vengeance just when you thought the wounds were healed.
It’s been over two years since I was laid off from the job I had given my heart and soul, my “this will be my forever job” promise to. I loved this job so much I worked stupid hours, I took on extra classes, I sat on far too many committees, I allowed my marriage to suffer, and I even did the unthinkable and started a Doctorate of Education program with a goal of having the option to one day move up in my organization. I spent all of my “free” time (laughable, truly) building up my classes, immersing in new ways to present information and engage students, talking best practices with colleagues from real life and the internet, and forming my full persona of “community college professor” to carry with me as the “first, most important” thing when interacting with the world.
I loved every minute of it.
I honestly would have done it until I died.
But financial crises in higher education are real and being pre-tenure makes you expendable and that’s what happened.
The day I was “laid off” (which is also laughable – we were fired, plain and simple) I ended up comforting the very kind woman who was (likely unfairly) tasked with letting me go. She was someone I cared about and I knew it hurt her to have to fire people – 20% of the whole workforce for the college was let go so I wasn’t the only person she had to do this with – and she has been lovely about keeping up with me since. Knowing she cared about me made the firing both better and worse, I finally had to tell her I needed to go fall apart so I could pull myself back together in time to teach. Yeah. I still had a class meeting that day.
Since that day every interaction with my colleagues and people who knew me because of that job, including students, has been a long series of me trying to be the bigger person. “It wasn’t personal…” “it was just the way things had to be…” “I know I was a good employee and a good professor, sometimes that isn’t what a thing is about…”
Side-note: On that last, I damn well did know I was good at my job. I had a high success rate, a high retention rate, but most importantly the students who came into my classroom knew I cared about them and gave me the best they had – even if that wasn’t enough to get through the class – because they knew I had their back. This entire post today has been sparked by a student who had more than the average amount of barriers who just sent me a message on social media which said, “You are the first person in my life who didn’t treat me like a freak. You are the first person who made me understand I could be more.” This was an 18-year old I was teaching, not an 8-year old, and not one person in her entire life – not her family, not her friends, not her previous teachers, or even one single person in her community – had ever given her one inkling she mattered in the world. The fact that I still have students reaching out, that they will send me messages or run up to greet me at the grocery, means far more than my pass rates. But I did have good pass rates, too, just for the record.
I’ve tried very hard to be empathetic, understanding, and kind about being let go. Even as I’ve slogged through a truly dismal job search. Even as I was informed no one that worked with me is “officially” allowed to provide me with a recommendation because they aren’t allowed to give ANYONE (not even students) recommendations. Even as I sank into the worst depression I’ve had since my suicidal years in my late teens. Even as I’ve applied for multiple jobs with the same college and been turned down while told I was second – TWICE. Even as I’ve tried to claw my way back to “being OK” because I don’t want to be a person that identifies my own happiness through my job title.
But I’m going to be honest with you now.
It’s bullshit.
I’m not OK with having been let go and I never was.
I’ve been on the emotional rollercoaster with this for two and a half years. I’ve been trying to force myself to quell my resentment, to feel happy for those still there, to mean it when I say I understand. I don’t understand. It’s not fair. I’m truly not OK with the vast majority of the stuff that’s happened, with what I’ve learned about myself and others, with how I ended up where I’m sitting today.
In the past several weeks I’ve felt it all: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Every single step, in rapid succession, several of them more than once. I’ve wept, I’ve raged, I’ve made my peace – I don’t know where I am with it right now, but my hope is that the rapid-cycling of these feelings indicates that I’m nearing my point of closure.
When I was laid off I described it as being left at the altar. My forays back into possible re-employment led me to understand that this college just isn’t that into me. The last rejection came with the comment, “Oh, but we’re still working hard over here to get you back!” No. No you aren’t. And I need to figure out how to be OK with that.
Which looks a little bit like acceptance.
I’m never going to be the professional person I thought I was going to be. I’m going to be a different professional person. Even if my past employer ran in today and swept me off my feet, begging me to come back, it would never be the same professional reality it was before. It’s totally OK for me to resent that loss. It’s OK for it to have taken me years to get to that headspace. It’s OK for me to have seriously considered going back. It’s OK that I cried myself sick. OK that I thought unkind things. OK that I missed it. OK to move on. All of these things and more are OK, because grief does what it wants and the human mind and heart work in annoyingly weird, non-logical ways - sometimes even when it's "just about a job." That’s all.
© Regan Wann 2018
