Jacob Scheier is an essayist, freelance journalist and Governor-General\u2019s Literary Award-winning poet whose books include<\/i> Is This Scary?<\/p>\n
It might not have been the most favourable, but one of the most memorable comments I ever received on a student evaluation was that I could be \u201ca bit hard to follow, but that was more an example of [my] passion for this subject over anything.\u201d That subject was creative writing. And yes, sometimes, I had difficulty tempering my excitement throughout a teaching career that has now been cut short.<\/p>\n
I have \u2013 or had \u2013 been teaching as a contract or \u201csessional\u201d creative-writing instructor. Given the competitiveness of the academic job market and my age (I was nearly 40 when I earned the requisite degree, though I had already published four books), I had come to accept that it was unlikely that I would ever have a faculty position. But I could live with that because I still had the rare privilege of making a (barely) livable wage doing something I was very passionate about.<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic took that from me. Actually, that\u2019s not quite right. It was the perceived \u201cend\u201d of the pandemic that really ruined my teaching career.<\/p>\n
I am immunocompromised and rely on medication to manage an autoimmune disease. This means vaccine protection from the virus is probably less effective for me than for most people. Also, my particular illness \u2013 Crohn\u2019s, an inflammatory bowel disease \u2013 has been shown to put me at significantly greater risk than most for long COVID: a potentially chronic condition that can be very debilitating. And despite how it may seem, COVID circulates widely much of the year: We are still in a pandemic.<\/p>\n
When universities returned to in-person learning in early 2022, a brief letter from my specialist was all I needed \u2013 because of my medical condition \u2013 to continue teaching online. But all that changed about a year ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jacob Scheier is an essayist, freelance journalist and Governor-General\u2019s Literary Award-winning poet whose books include<\/i> Is This Scary?<\/p>\n
It might not have been the most favourable, but one of the most memorable comments I ever received on a student evaluation was that I could be \u201ca bit hard to follow, but that was more an example of [my] passion for this subject over anything.\u201d That subject was creative writing. And yes, sometimes, I had difficulty tempering my excitement throughout a teaching career that has now been cut short.<\/p>\n
I have \u2013 or had \u2013 been teaching as a contract or \u201csessional\u201d creative-writing instructor. Given the competitiveness of the academic job market and my age (I was nearly 40 when I earned the requisite degree, though I had already published four books), I had come to accept that it was unlikely that I would ever have a faculty position. But I could live with that because I still had the rare privilege of making a (barely) livable wage doing something I was very passionate about.<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic took that from me. Actually, that\u2019s not quite right. It was the perceived \u201cend\u201d of the pandemic that really ruined my teaching career.<\/p>\n