To my friends and colleagues in the Academy,

I write today with both regret and with hope.

I must regretfully resign all my service positions, effective immediately. My offer is that I hope to serve again in some capacity someday in the future, if I am able to find another job at a supportive library and if the membership approves.

I fell down 1.5 flights of concrete stairs in January 2023, the fire stairs at my cheap-but-clean apartment complex. Despite being only nominally less expensive than other complexes, this Limited Liability Corporation still declined to put non-slip tread on the stairs and instead charged me the full move out fee. This aggravated the head injury that I got in February 2022, when I attempted to assist a blind woman who was being verbally assaulted by a QAnon Fanatic on a Denver RTD light rail train — when I showed up at her seat to help, the very angry white man physically assaulted me instead. The all-male RTD police department declined to investigate because they claimed “no one was hurt,” but it may very well be a career ending head injury for me. All of the liability in all incidents rests with ME, unless I can afford to retain my own attorney, which I cannot.

I have been attempting to continue working despite my injuries because I thought that “Academia Needed Me,” and I grew up in Academia. It has been my home for all my life. But I find that I cannot continue to serve in a society that no longer seems to recognize or reward service — and I don’t mean the library profession or any library society: I mean the society of the United States of America.

I plan to declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with the help of a free tool from Harvard University, so that I can use my retirement savings from Academia to pay my medical bills, because I am tired of begging the insurance companies to pay me what they promised when I paid my premiums. No number of subscription services that promise to bring me food — because I’m literally too exhausted to cross the street — can solve my problems.

My problem was that I did a huge amount of work because I was desperate to hang onto my health insurance and other fringe benefits. Because: I had trouble selling my house in New Hampshire after I moved to Denver, and then I ruptured my appendix; got COVID-19 in the first wave; threw out my back badly by attempting to return to work too soon after having COVID and then had to work face down for months before I could see a Physical Therapist in person; and finally got dumped by the “love of my life” and not-so-secret-video-game-addict of a boyfriend over an argument about which Christmas Carols to listen to in December 2020. I then hemorrhaged savings by attempting to find a new apartment during the Pandemic while my beloved Grandmother, a member of the Greatest Generation, died slowly in hospice from COVID over 2.2 years before being finished off by her second bout with COVID.

Theoretically, I could borrow the money to pay my $4k medical bills, because I have “Great Credit” and a “High Net Worth”, but all of my savings are locked into retirement accounts that I may not live to use. By United States law, I can withdraw $10k to buy a house without tax penalties, but I cannot use the same money to pay medical bills which the insurance company has declined to pay for reasons that I would probably need a law degree to understand. I also could not use the money to buy food this summer when the insurance company ruled that I was not eligible for Short-Term Disability benefits because I was still able to work half-time from home. I almost starved to death in my own apartment because I was too sick to walk to the grocery store across the street and I couldn’t afford delivery; and no one from work checked on me — possibly because they were all too exhausted from covering multiple empty positions in an already “lean” staffing structure in which new high priority and high pressure initiatives were continually introduced in an effort to “Field of Dreams” more new positions. There was always money for new search committees, but never any checks from the insurance company.

The worst part of this story is that I believe that both my mentor and a chair attempted to tell me that the Engineering School made an offer for me — they wanted me, even with my ten head injuries. But my Dean declined to pass on my offer unless I agreed to a closed door meeting with his Business Manager. I did not kneel to kiss the ring. But I kissed a great many rings and paid a great many bills to get where I am today, and right now moving my head too quickly makes me vomit (my apologies if I have turned your stomach).

Therefore, if The Academy has decided that it can pretend to be a business, then I can pretend to be a business too, and I will actually cash out on some of my “great Benefits.”

I have greatly enjoyed working with you all, and I wish you the very best of luck in the future.

I hope that any administrators reading this will remember this lesson: that Liability is meant to be a shield and not a sword. Every sword is double edged.

Best regards,