Author: Olivia

Basically the title. A few years ago I enrolled as a PhD student and GA at the University of Connecticut. I saw some bad writing on the wall about the way students were being treated and I tried to join the UConn Grad Student Union. I had to write down my department and advisor on the membership form. I guess they reached out to her to confirm my position and she told me “my students don't unionize” and (?) refused to sign the membership form, so I couldn't join. Isn't this illegal? And yet it does say right on the grad union website, “All GAs, with the exception of the Health Center in Framingham, are members of the bargaining unit” which my department was housed under. http://uconngradunion.org/home/resources/current-members/forms/ I dropped out after a year in the program because, unsurprisingly, I was super correct about all those red flags I noticed early…

Wouldn’t it work, because then everyone could protest without losing their jobs. Obviously don’t steal at mom and pop shops, but places like chain restaurants, shitty tech companies, the utility companies. We would need like an app or something that listed wages for each position and the wage the company is paying, and then color code it.

I just graduated college last December and I’m a couple weeks into my first full time corporate role. It’s a well-known company and the pay is great. I don’t necessarily have complaints about the people I work with either but corporate life itself isn’t doing it for me. At school, I was very hardworking. I’d sometimes skip parties and hangouts to go to networking events and land internships and study extra to get good grades etc. you get the gist. But, I still had a decent amount of time for myself and to spend it with the people in my life. I’m really fortunate to be working from home and not wasting even more time on commute but it feels very draining and almost lonely working. I find it hard to make time to hang out with friends and on the weekends, I’d be too drained to do anything but…

Title. Something my older brother used to say in half-jest. It's become a credo of mine that I wanted to share here.