I can’t stop thinking about this. https://twitter.com/jewonthis/status/1277832399921926144

I got my first real teaching gig at Melbourne in 2016, while I was doing my PhD. I’d just had a baby—she was only 5 months old when I started. I took a whole subject myself—lecturing, tutoring and marking for USA and the World.

It was only about 50 students but it was my first time and I worked so hard. During my very first lecture I’d barely even healed from childbirth. I was exhausted. About half way through I could feel my boobs start leaking and I was sure all the students could see (they couldn’t).

Composing myself in that moment is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. With the exception of my wonderful supervisor, who was on leave, and overseas, and had absolutely no obligation to, literally no other member of staff checked on me.

It was my first time lecturing, I didn’t even have my PhD, and no one asked how I was doing or if I needed support. Aside from my own wellbeing, I always thought that was terrible for the students—what if I was doing an awful job? How is that fair to them?

It was clear I would only get attention if I messed up, and messed up badly. Literally the only interaction I had with senior staff who should have been looking out for me that semester was when I emailed the Head of School because a student had plagiarised and I needed help.

I got back furious emails about wasting their time. I was devastated, and embarrassed.

I probably worked harder that whole semester than I ever had. With a brand new baby, and (I now know) pretty severe post-natal anxiety.

And now we find out that they were probably underpaying all of us, and not just by a little bit—for some of my cohort, it’s thousands of dollars. And without @NHECasuals, which is doing absolutely amazing work, we wouldn’t even know about it!

My parents paid our rent twice that year because we were struggling so much. We had that safety net, which is our enormous privilege. But of course most people didn’t and don’t.

It’s not just the money, though. It’s also that we had such an amazing cohort of brilliant History PhDs. We all worked so hard, and without exception, we are all outstanding teachers continuing to do outstanding work.

Melbourne University likes to tell everyone it produces some of the best PhDs in the world. And it does. But it treats them like garbage. It uses them, and underpays them, and then throws them to the wolves.

We are explicitly excluded from applying for most postdoctoral fellowships there, and specifically ineligible for the most prestigious ones.

In conclusion, this has brought up a lot for me, and higher ed in this country is broken.

Thank you, @NHECasuals, and everyone who worked on this, for drawing attention to it and continuing to do such important organising against a broken system.