〰️ After getting hit by a car while biking to work, I decided to apply for an MFA. In March of 2013, I received an acceptance letter from
@newschoolwriting and a few months later, moved to Brooklyn. TNS was the first space where I felt fully seen and supported and encouraged as a student. It was the first space where I was mentored, where I was a teaching fellow, where people listened, really listened, when I spoke. All of that, kept me writing, which led to teaching. All of that, was unpaid labor by my professors, who were mostly PTF. Even as a student, I saw the exhaustion, the lack of support.
〰️ Fast forward to Fall 2019 and I'm PTF at
@eugenelang (thanks to
@alison_kinney who recommended me), teaching across the hall from
@kristenkorvette . The semester after that, the pandemic hit and the world shifted. Classes went online and the boundaries between the contact hour and compensated work and the work that needed to be done in order to not only teach, but to support my students alongside my PTF colleagues. After a year of remote learning and of hours and hours and hours of adapting and expanding coursework while living with the weight of the collective grief, exhaustion, and uncertainty of the pandemic, we returned to campus.
〰️ Fall 2021, a few months into the semester, I began the a new academic year with my bank account in the red, with holes in my Vans, and an open and hopeful heart. I was happy to be back on campus, to meet so many students in-person for the first time. And then in October, during my 8AM Intro to Fiction class, a projector screen fell on me, leaving me with a concussion that I continued to teach through because I was afraid of what would happen if I took time to rest and heal. I was afraid of losing my courses and not being offered courses for the following semester. So I kept working, I kept teaching and it impacted my health in an irrevocable way. Even now my vision isn't the same as it was before the concussion. I told facilities about what happened and mentioned it to our dean at the time and all I heard was "Sorry." (Continued in the comments)
#strikeontns
