Resistance is not futile: From #adjuncthustle to Hell Yeah! By Genevieve Erin O’Brien discusses her hardship as an adjunct professor in academia. She was teaching public and private schools for two or three times a week as she was scrambled from paycheck to paycheck. When she mentioned the story about the $500 sneaker and that's how much she gets paid within a week. I had sympathy for her because she felt like she wasn’t making enough money for what she was doing and knew that it was enough to support a family one day. At one point in time, she considered the tenure track and created a facebook support group “Starfleet” which was geared towards an Asian American community in support of other women of color, as a strategy to survive academia. Since O’Brien struggled to find someone who related to her problems as a woman of color in academia. I think that it is amazing that she was able to build a facebook group that uplifts Asian American women whether it is about academia or advice on taxes, name change etc. For once, she felt a sense of belonging because she knew that people could relate to the hardships and positions that she had to go through.
(I wasn't able to find the facebook group that O'Brien created, but I found a group that was quite similar)
Although O'Brien decided to leave academia, I admire her courage and strength. She knew realistically that being on the tenure-track was going to take an additional nine years and that she was going to face hardship due to discrimination of Asian American women in academia. My question is, how many people or what is the percentage of people that leave academia due to this reason? During this time, she was putting her passion for art on the back burner because she didn’t think that would be enough to make a living off of. Through self-reflection she realized that she needed to leave academia and focus on the things that bring her joy: food, art and politics. In conclusion, she valued her self-worth and was able to pursue a new career in which she had passion for. Although she did leave academia behind she can utilize and apply this in her career as she uses food to think about race, culture and ethnicity.
References:
Associations for Asian American Studies AAS
Genevieve Erin O’Brien. “Resistance Is Not Futile: From #adjuncthustle to Hell Yeah!”
in Academia“.
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