on life (this makes #3)

Jane Chen
September 26, 2025

In September, just over two years since I was last designated as Affected by the public service's mass layoffs — wait, sorry, I mean, budget reprioritisation measures,

I am informed that I have been declared Surplus. They notify me of this two weeks later than every other Affected Employee, by the way,

when I have already worked it out for myself. There's nothing like getting a little premonition, logging into your departmental email account, sifting through hoardes of messages, hunting through an Intranet, and then finally identifying a link buried in the chat records of a Teams meeting,

a link to a bunch of documents. A spreadsheet lists me as a number, and my number as to be discontinued. That is how I discover that I will soon be relieved of my ongoing position at the department,

because that is what happens when you are a ghost employee, off doing other things on leave. They remember you, and the dollars you represent, when deciding who needs to be exterminated from payroll,

but they simultaneously forget you (the human fully intending to come back, actually; so invested in the work of the public service; relying upon the stability of the role; never having worked anywhere else, since graduating university the first time around) when it comes to making announcements and executing the requisite consultation processes.

I consider kicking up a fuss with the backing of the union, but instead, I have decided to go quietly. Déja vu: I will be taking my package, the one I wanted two years ago, when I needed money and time more than I needed a job,

even though, now, my circumstances have reversed. This is a win, I tell myself — or at least, it is just life. It's just how things go.

Here's what they don't tell you about being a full-time PhD student:

It's just imposter syndrome, inserting caveats and qualifiers and "perhaps" and "it appears" into every second line — because you are not sure of your own analysis and you may never be, and you dread being asked to explain your conclusions
It's just waking up every day and working on the same damn thing, trying to piece together words, craning your neck, straining your eyes, the body fixed in a perpetually clenched state of focus, until something gives and you can no longer bear to be upright
It's just having so, so much still to unravel, read about, question, review, express, piece together — even at what is already a rather late stage in the process. It is having to put life on hold in order to make room to simply think. Your friends get engaged or married or promoted, quit their jobs to travel, switch careers, purchase their first homes. All the while, you remain a student; you foster, then adopt your first cat
It's just lying about the emotional toll that the process is taking, because, quite frankly, it's too difficult to narrate for those outside of this very particular academic bubble. "It's going well", "I'm fine", will suffice, because the statements are mostly true — let's just keep the long story very short, and move along, can I get you another drink?
It's just questioning the value of both the process and the output — whether prospective employers will just see this as a big ol' gap, and if my relevant work experience (from two years ago, now) will still be enough to prove that I am not only book-smart. It's wondering if you've made a huge mistake, stepping out of the public service in time for the university sector to implode. She does not dream of labour, but — much to her dismay — her flesh prison of a body still needs something in its little belly
It’s just stretching and playing at words, exploring fiction and illustration and other forms of experimental writing, all tools in the academic trade — only to be asked to snap back to convention. It’s attempting to pen a masterpiece, until words lose their musical quality, when, really, all is needed is satisfactory
It's just finding unexpected moments of comraderie and joy and pride, we have accepted your proposal for a book chapter, we grant you funds to run a symposium on decolonial feminisms. It's that rare space to just be a human who thinks, and therefore is.

on life (this makes #3)

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Acknowledgement of Country