I'm not someone who writes diaries often, and most of my rare diaries are of a personal nature. But I've never actually written a serious rant before, and it's hard for me to bare myself like this. It's as much a call for help as a rant. But the alternative is...pretty awful to contemplate.
The themes will be familiar to most anyone on this site. The 99% vs. the 1%, the utter lack of interest in scientific research in our larger society, austerity fever in the states, the Fiscal Cliff...it all collides in one lost soul.
Follow me below the curlicue, if you're interested...
In 2008, right as the crash was making national news, I received a virology Ph.D., in uniquely horrible circumstances - in the midst of a potentially deadly illness. (That's a whole diary in itself). I did a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH, but was laid off after 3 years due to our beloved Republican House and the budget cuts already starting to rain down. A year long job hunt during my time at the NIH produced not one single interview.
Worthless.
But after six months, I was offered a job at University of Michigan - as a technician. At half the pay of a junior faculty member. And for a one year temp assignment.
I resolved to make the best of it. After all, for a short time, I had a job, right? It beat unemployment. Even if I was losing money in the deal in the long run, at least it'd keep my resume current. And my boss, well, turned out to be a real human being. He treated me like junior faculty, not like the peon my job title suggested. It looked like things might, just might, have a happy ending here for me.
And then, with three months remaining on the job, came Thursday.
I was offered temporary "bridge" funding past my end-of-year term - at half my normal pay. Pay $10K a year below graduate student stipends. Pay below what the lowest ranks of the UM made.
I am not even making it based on what I am making NOW. Half of it would use up my savings in a month. And what would it say about me, professionally, if I showed ANY willingness to work for half of what was already a very poor salary for a Ph.D.? Even the state of Michigan, as miserly as it is under Snyder, doesn't recognize a 50% salary cut as a legitimate job offer - I'd still get unemployment. So I (carefully) put my foot down, and said that unless the remainder of my salary could be funded, I would have no options but to leave.
My boss responded by more or less telling me I was spoiled, dropping his support for me, taking his ball and going home. I am not fired (he really has little power to fire me at this stage because of the nature of my funding), but I'm a dead man walking.
Worthless.
It wasn't all that I was told. I was told that I was "uncompetitive" for an actual tenure-track faculty position (in this environment, no surprise) but that even a full time research position was out of reach for me. And no positions - none - were more then this year to year existence. The university would not even assist me with career counseling. Like most universities, the U of Michigan is utterly addicted to cheap labor, in an environment of ever-falling funding and ever-rising administrative salaries, there is less and less money to do the actual work. Or pay the people doing the actual work.
Even the president of the faculty diversity program would only tell me, "Half pay wouldn't pay all your bills, but it would pay some of them, right?"
Worthless.
Over the last few years I've been told over and over again that all the possible alternative careers I've explored - teaching professor, museum exhibit developer, core lab, even science teacher in public schools - are out of reach for me. Industry, where I used to work, has one job for every thousand postdocs. Government, federal or state, is locked in the grip of Austerity Fever. The Ph.D. had no value at all. It was worthless to buy me any sort of way to make a living.
I had no value at all. Not to my society. Certainly not to the 1%, be it in wealth or in scientific rank.
How am I supposed to move my fiancee in with me? How am I supposed to risk homelessness for both of us for such an existence? How the hell am I ever supposed to buy a house, let alone have kids? How can I help support my elderly mother, who spent her life savings saving my life? All of what the American middle class are expected to do. Never mind just the simple challenge of keeping a roof over my head.
Worthless.
The ladders have all been pulled up. In science, the 1%/99% meme is alive and well. The 1% - the scientific "royalty" - get almost all the grant money. They get their papers in Science and Nature, the top journals. If you don't work for their labs, forget ever getting a tenure-track position. Forever getting ANY position in academia at all. And since industry and government, the "safety valves" of my profession, are completely job locked as well...
I'm 41 years old. Disabled (due to my disease). I have Asperger's Syndrome. I can't wait another 2 decades for the Depression to work itself out of the system. I need a job, a career start, now. I've run out of time to wait and bide my time. I've been doing it 15 years. Before I know it, I'll be 50, unemployable, and not even having STARTED a career. Assuming I live that long. There's no Medicaid in Michigan for childless adults.
Worthless.
I am not worthless to my loved ones, but they cannot help me. They are in as bad a shape or worse as I am. I've watched the ship go down, and I've been one of those caught without a seat on a lifeboat. Just waiting to drown.
In the end, worthless, to those with the money. The ones that will decide if I live or die slowly. That's really what is at stake here, and in the Real World game of Life, I'm one of the losers, even though I supposedly did everything right.
But I do know one thing: the next person that smugly tells me more education is the answer to our job woes, or that there aren't enough STEM Ph.Ds. in this country, is going to get punched in the mouth.
Too bad I can't make a living decking the self-righteous.