Pre-carrot-y Cake!

May 11, 2020

Sometimes, the recipe is the story…

Cake:
2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups sugar
1 ½ c. oil 😡
4 eggs
2 cups grated carrots
1 ¼ cups drained, crushed pineapple
1 cup chopped nuts 😭

Frosting:
4 oz. white cream cheese
½ cup butter
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla 😳

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350/180 degrees.

2. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a large bowl. As you stir them together, take a moment to think about all the amazing colleagues you’ve worked with over the years, who have since left academia due to lack of regular employment. Feel how much you miss them. Then, focus on the realization that they have moved on to work in other areas and are likely in a much better place than you. Some of them are living close to their families, in places they love. Some even have social lives outside of their work. And yet you are considered the “success story” for having managed to keep your head above water—just barely—in academia these past few years. Take a deep breath into your diaphragm and then exhale, laughing out loud at the irony. They say laughter is the best medicine after all.

3. Create a well in the dry ingredients and then add the sugar, oil, and eggs. Stir them together with a wooden spoon until the mixture looks consistent. Meditate on consistency, which in your line of work is maximum excellence, all the time. Excellence in teaching, excellence in winning big grants, excellence in research, excellence in public impact, excellence in administration. Consider these impossible standards, about which you are constantly forced to write narratives highlighting your progress until you lose all sense of who you are as a person and a scholar, in order to justify your existence in academia. And then meditate on how easily all of this hard work will be immediately undermined by a negative student evaluation or jealous senior colleague’s comments. This is especially true if you are a woman, a person of color, or part of some other under-represented cohort in academia (or Furies forbid, some combination of all of the above), as you’ll likely have to deal with this kind of undermining behavior on a regular basis because you’re more prone to people perceiving you as angry, lacking in experience, and/or a diversity hire who doesn’t really “deserve” their job. Stir the batter for just for a minute or so. The batter, much like the egos of the senior white male colleagues upon whom your long-term survival in academia is dependent, is a bit delicate and doesn’t respond well to over-zealous mixing.

4. Add the carrot, pineapple, and nuts to the batter and stir once more. Take another deep breath and fight the urge to dissolve into a ball of anxiety over the cost of the pineapple that is now disappearing into the batter. Think instead about all the conferences and workshops you have self-funded lately because your short-term contract renders you ineligible for external or departmental funding to attend such events, even though your colleagues’ understanding of your “success” as a scholar is inexplicably tied to your presence at such events. Trust in the pineapple: the satisfaction you’ll get from its inclusion in the cake is far greater than you’ll ever experience from yet another 8 AM Sunday morning conference presentation. If you need to cry at this point, it’s okay. Let it out. Your tears will add a little extra moisture to the batter, and the added salt really helps bring out the natural sugars in the shredded carrot and pineapple, so everyone wins!

5. Pour the batter into a buttered 13x9 pan and bake for 35-40 minutes. What should you do with this free time? How about some of that work for which you never get paid but for some inexplicable reason is considered an essential part of your job as a “public intellectual?” Which “opportunity” to tackle first? Perhaps a quick response to that patronizing journalist who hasn’t read any of your work and has only spent the last week working on a story that touches upon your area of expertise, but yet is demanding that you personally answer for all the mistakes they perceive in how “experts” have addressed the topic? Or how about tackling a “quick” administrative task for that senior colleague with the stable job who prides themself on sticking to a 30-hour work week? You know that they’ll ultimately take credit for your work, but it would be helpful to have them on your side the next time the department is discussing who should get contracts next semester. You might get two classes next time around! Or get paid through the hungry summer months! Dare to dream big—if you can sleep, that is.

6. The cake will be finished when it’s risen slightly and becomes a dark brown color. When you press the top gently with your finger, the indentation should disappear. At this point, you can remove it from the oven and place it on a rack to cool. Be careful not to burn yourself when removing it from the oven. I like to proceed as though I’m being forced to collaborate with one of those toxic white feminists who managed to secure a place for themselves in the university’s senior administration. You know, the one who has “succeeded” in her professional life, pulled the ladder up after her, and is now hell-bent on subjecting all the women who attempt to follow in her footsteps to the same humiliations that she had to endure? And let’s not forgot that time she spoke out in defense of that sex pest professor who, unofficially, is no longer allowed to have women students or staff in their office without leaving the door open because he’s the “real victim” of all those complaints and wrote a really important book back in the 1980s? No matter how cautiously you proceed, she’s likely to burn you somehow, but you’re an optimistic person and you have to get through this, so take every precaution at your disposal and hope for the best.

7. While the cake is cooling, you can make the icing by placing all the ingredients in a separate bowl and then beating vigorously until perfectly smooth. This will take a few minutes, and is a great time to release all that pent-up frustration you have with the job market. Personally, I like to spend this time reflecting on all the “helpful” job market advice I’ve received over the years from colleagues who need to learn the meaning of a lovely little concept called “survivor bias.” My personal favorite is being told I need to ‘learn to say no’ by the very people who then bully me into taking on additional unacknowledged work, none of which will actually help “build my CV” or get me noticed by the powers-that-be in the university as they promise. Let’s face it: if these tasks were really the kind of things that would get you noticed in a positive way, your colleagues would likely be doing them themselves. But by acknowledging this and saying no, you’d be making an enemy of someone who is maybe just petty enough to then spend the next few weeks trying to get you fired for being difficult or a bad team player. It’s a no-win situation, so just nod and smile and thank them for their advice. Try to ignore that gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach. It’s probably just caused by all that excitement from getting to add a new line on your CV!

8. Once the cake has cooled completely, spread the icing over the top. Take a moment to celebrate your accomplishment. This is an important part of self-care, which the powers-that-be now recognize is essential for surviving the various hardships associated with the inhumane working conditions upon which higher education institutions thrive in the 21^st century. They will demonstrate their concern for your well-being by funding self care-related workshops by placing the onus on you to fit meditation and mindfulness activities into your already over-stretched week without reducing your workload, and then busy-shaming you when you’re unable to embrace the institution’s kindly efforts to put your well-being first. But that’s okay because you can compensate for the feelings of shame by sorrow-eating the delicious cake you have just made! It tastes as good as a permanent contract would feel…

😡 I think olive oil gives this cake an especially lovely flavor, but being precariously employed, it might be a bit expensive. And let’s face it, your earning potential as an academic is basically zero so you won’t be eligible for any credit cards or loans. Regular vegetable oil works nicely too and has the benefit of being more affordable. And you’re much more likely to be able to find it at the local food bank on which you depend for your family’s survival!

😭 Optional. A more “traditional” carrot cake would use walnuts, which are also the more affordable option. However, if you feel like skipping that next conference, which you’ve convinced yourself to attend on the grounds it could make the difference between another few months on a precarious contract and finally landing that most precious of all unicorns—a permanent job—you should certainly save enough money to afford a few pecans or pistachios, both of which are even tastier options. After all, the other conference attendees will be so busy trying to impress this year’s “it” scholarly star that they’re highly unlikely to even notice whether you’re there or not...

😳 For aesthetic reasons, I really like the fancy vanilla that includes vanilla seeds for making white frostings. But after buying some for this recipe, I realized that I’ll now never be able to afford a mortgage or to have children. All those years of refusing to eat avocados undone by one moment of excess!

In all seriousness, this post is loosely based on real experiences of precarity amid the toxic work culture that persists in many higher education institutions within and beyond North America and Europe. COVID-19 has made it harder for people to ignore the inequalities and injustices that have long existed in society, and have, by extension, guided the neoliberal frameworks that structure most academic institutions. Given the circumstances, now is the time for those of us who have institutional status to think seriously about how we can transform the places in which we work into more humane and supportive spaces, especially for the most vulnerable academic minorities among us: women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color, among others. And let’s not forget about the often-overlooked professionals upon whom our work relies, including but not limited to research and teaching assistants, archivists and librarians, administrative staff, and cleaners. This post is dedicated to all precariously employed academics who are facing even greater uncertainty as a result of COVID-19.