Leaving higher education was never part of my plan. But then again neither was a late autism diagnosis, followed in quick succession by diagnoses of ADHD and dyscalculia and, more recently, fibromyalgia and hypermobility spectrum disorder. It’s a lot to process and, in part, I’m writing this to make sense of all that has happened.

Unrealised possibilities

I came to higher education initially as a way to offset the financial precarity of my visual art and performance practice. Yet the pragmatism of supporting others to develop was alluring. What started as a part-time, fixed-term contract, morphed into a permanent post and ultimately to actively seeking opportunities to climb the career ladder. While I remained working in professional services throughout my fifteen years in higher education, the divide between professional services and academia always appeared artificial to me. This was reinforced by the fact my last role was a permanent academic contract as an Educational Developer within a careers department.

Six years ago, this represented the absolute ideal to me. It felt like, at last, I could combine my deep interest in the pedagogy of employability with my passion for supporting the development of colleagues, while leveraging the nature of an academic contract to apply for research funding and undertake more writing.

Yet, all of this never fully materialised.

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