Beyond Selidor

Oooh, archives sounds fun, and I'm glad you moved out of academia and into something you genuinely enjoy. I know a lot of people in my shoes, and I feel very strongly that academia (particularly humanities academia) is really, really bad at either acknowledging there aren't enough academic jobs for the number of students undertaking PhDs or preparing PhD students for any field other than academia! I was fortunate in that I was about two years older than others who started PhDs straight after master's degrees and had some experience working in non-academic fields, even if it was just weekend jobs, and that my scholarship wasn't enough to live on so I took on weekend work as a library invigilator. This meant that when I finished my PhD and an academic job didn't magically drop into my lap, I had relevant work experience and people who could write non-academic references for me. I know other people who had literally done nothing but be university students from the age of eighteen to their late twenties — not even weekend or holiday jobs — and they had a difficult, uphill battle of a career change with no relevant work experience in their late twenties/early thirties.

I'm so, so angry about Brexit. What makes it particularly galling on a personal level is that I received my UK citizenship in May 2016, and my new British passport (representing the freedom of movement rights I had so desperately craved) was literally delivered through my door at the same moment I switched on the TV the morning after the referendum and saw the result. As a non-EU migrant who paid thousands of pounds for visas and spent years in an extreme state of stress about whether I'd be allowed to remain in the country, to see British people throw away their freedom of movement rights like garbage was traumatic in a way I can hardly articulate. And my sympathies with your own situation — not being able to angry publicly about it would make things that much worse.