Evelyn G

Despite how little money I have, and always weighing up whether I can put the heating and the dehumidifier and the oven on, I am feeling very festive this year in the run up to Christmas. My 18 month old is enthralled by the lights and trees we see going up around us. I am glad she’s not of the age where she has any expectation about what Santa will bring!

This week I gave two lectures at a university, I dropped my child off at her dad’s at 5am to get there on time. It’s paid work but by the time I had paid for 2 tubes, 2 trains, a taxi and a bus to get there, and bought a coffee and breakfast at the station and then some lunch on the way home, I only get to keep about half of what I’ll be paid. I’m proud of having got this far in academia, of having a paid (though zero hours and infrequent) lecturing job - after years of doing it “for the experience” - and of managing my PhD while I’m a single mum. But I also wonder after all this time studying and working and volunteering to pursue a career in academia, if it’s ever going to be worth it. Higher education is falling apart and early career academic positions are so precarious and badly paid, I wonder how I’ll ever get to the other side of it to have the comfortable research and teaching job I’d love and that would enable me to afford to do a psychotherapy training at the same time. Still it’s good to have these ambitions as a focus. It’s so easy to feel myself, my identity, disappearing into poverty and single parenthood. It’s good to remind myself that it’s precisely this view of the world that makes me a better, more empathetic and socially aware, academic