Today I will be honored for 20 years of service to my company. It’s an odd feeling. I don’t think there will be a gold watch, which is good because I don’t really wear gold. When I add up all the compensation I have received, it seems like a lot. But they got 20 years of my life (so far) in return, or at least a goodly portion of those years’ waking hours (and some sleepless nights).

When I started my career, I thought I wanted to be a university professor. Then I discovered that’s like wanting to be a rock star –  beyond the commonplace thing called “talent”, one must also be in the right place, at the right time, have a lot of luck, and know people who can help (and want to help). Not to mention money. I had none of that. I remember distinctly – every PhD program or M.A. level instructor position I looked at had the standard late 1990s attempt at diversification remedy built in: “Women and minority candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.” And I understood that, because faculties were (and are) heavily weighted with the white men who used to get pretty much all the plum jobs. So that didn’t happen.

I’m not bitter – I enjoyed teaching at UNO as a graduate student, and I’ve been an adjunct and might be again. But when I see what’s happening to higher education in the 2000s, I feel relief that I’m not locked into a paranoid system that now seems to be largely a crucible of political warfare and mutual suspicion. Accommodations, intellectual rigor, and safe spaces do battle with right-wing insurgents who want to “target” liberal “indoctrination” (and individual professors) at the university, while a majority of one political party now believes higher education does more to harm the country than help it. Seriously. They believe this.

So I just do what I know how to do, try not to complain too much, and show up every day (or at least the vast majority of days). It’s been a good policy. I am at peace.