And THIS week, I threatened to quit

Over a couch. I know!

Back when I worked at America’s Oldest Continuously Published Newspaper, it was something of a weekly ritual for me to threaten to quit. Something would set me off, there would appear to be no resolution that I liked, and I would state my intentions to clean out my desk. This was pretty funny, considering I didn’t have another job lined up, and for a time, I was a single mother (of the non-heiress variety) who needed the money.

Still. My gut was telling me to leave years before I did, but I ignored my gut because what did I know about life outside a newsroom? My threat became such a ritual that decades into it, when I finally did clean out my desk, people were settled in for yet another floor show.

But then I didn’t come back the next day, or the day after that.

The next job I quit, I gave no signal before I delivered my two-week notice. I just quit. The job was not a good fit, and after all, I’d quit a job before and I could do it again. My gut ruled, and fortunately, another job rather quickly came by, and I leaped on and never looked back.

Quitting the Hartford Courant taught me a lot, almost as much as did working there. In a newsroom, we practiced our freedom of speech with loud and lusty commentary, coupled with a healthy dislike for authority that absolutely served us in journalism, but can be a problem out in the real world. In my newish job in academia, I quickly learned not to say “fuck” in a meeting. I also did not threaten to quit.

Maybe that was maturity rearing its very-late head.

Academia has been challenging, especially during this pandemic. I’m not whining. I don’t think any industry has been left untouched, but this week, a conversation about my students’ use of a room on campus bubbled up again, and I yelled so loud that it stopped hall traffic, and I fired off the kind of email that was a daily experience for Newsroom Me. Then I grabbed my bag and left.

I felt a little like I’d fallen off the wagon, though the email wasn’t performative. It isn’t necessary to go deep into the reason why I sent it, other than to say someone in facilities at my university doesn’t want journalism students to have a pool table in their newsroom (we eventually moved it out when the students of this particular semester said they didn’t use it any more) and now the guy doesn’t want a couch the students moved in in there (though facilities will not supply us with furniture). This feels like a bigger push to boot the students out of the newsroom. I have had multiple meetings and email exchanges explaining what a good idea it would be to support these students, but this issue refuses to be retired. At one point, to celebrate the conversation’s longevity, I posted a photo of the facilities guy on the inside and outside of my office door. His photo remains.

I know. This is all immensely stupid, but it is precisely the kind of thing that can derail a mission. And it’s pretty freeing to tell the truth. I was in on Thursday to play a majorly minor role in a department event, and I sat and had my picture taken on the couch (see above), and then posted it on social media. See our new couch? It’s a super-comfortable couch and the story of how the students found it and dragged it up two flights of stairs is epic. I applaud their can-do-ism

However this is resolved in favor of the students’ needs, one of my favorite things about being my age is that I’ve run out of shits to give, don’t feel especially accommodating to stupid ideas, and I move through the world secure in the knowledge that my gut knows best. Would my gut tell me to quit over a couch? Fuck, yeah.