When the Ground Shifts Beneath Us

Living Through Limbo

I am writing today after quite some time. The last few months have been heavy in ways I didn’t expect. Personal challenges, professional uncertainty, everything arriving at once. I made it through, though the weight of it still sits somewhere inside me. I spent weeks in limbo, not knowing what would happen next, and that feeling stayed with me long after the decisions were made.

The lack of government funding has pushed universities into a corner. Institutions began relying on international students to survive, to fill the gaps left by shrinking budgets. Now immigration policies have tightened, so the one thing universities depended on is also becoming a challenge. The whole sector feels like it’s standing on unstable ground, shifting under our feet while we try to keep going.

Restructuring and the Quiet Heartbreak

Universities across many countries are restructuring. As departments shrink, merge, or disappear, people are made redundant. Those who remain carry heavier workloads while trying to process the emotional shock of losing colleagues. Relief and sadness sit together in the same breath; relief for still having a job, sadness for watching good people leave, and stress from realising that some of the toxic ones somehow remain.

One of my colleagues who was made redundant said to me yesterday, “It’s a move upwards — an opportunity.” I held onto that sentence because it captured the strange mix of grief and hope that so many are feeling. Others feel exhausted from interviews that lead nowhere, as hiring everywhere is limited. Hearts are breaking quietly. The cost of living is already high for those earning a salary, so imagining life with no income, while still wanting to work, is frightening.

The Bittersweet Reality of Staying

My own limbo was draining. Not knowing whether I still had a job created a tension I carried everywhere. Relief came when I learned I would stay, yet happiness didn’t follow. As names of those leaving surfaced, the feeling became bittersweet. Hard to digest. Hard to accept. Hard to pretend everything was normal.

This season forced me to reflect. Being overburdened with work and stuck in limbo left little time for myself. I realised how easily we lose our sense of self while worrying about what might happen to us or to others. Life continues with or without us. It doesn’t pause for our fears, our exhaustion, or our grief. When someone says “you matter,” I find myself wondering, do I really matter, or is that just a line we tell each other so we don’t fall apart.

Feeling Like Parts in a Machine

It feels as though we are living inside a machine. We become cogs or parts, useful until the machine is redesigned. During these redesigns, many parts are discarded, some are reused. Sometimes the good parts are thrown away because someone assumes they are no longer useful, even when they still are. In that process, precious people are lost.

Friendships formed at work feel real and warm. Once people leave, those relationships often shift. They soften into acquaintances, not because the care disappears, but because the shared space that held the friendship together dissolves. A new cycle begins, whether we are ready for it or not.

A Fragile Future for Higher Education

This era is overflowing with information — real, fake, and everything in between. The ability to discern truth matters more than ever. Academics play a crucial role in that process. When dedicated academics are made redundant because of funding cuts and policy decisions outside our control, the consequences ripple outward. What chances do students have of becoming academics in the future? What becomes of higher education when the very people who uphold its integrity are pushed out? The respect universities once held feels fragile.

Sitting With What Remains

This season has reminded me that change rarely arrives gently. It disrupts, exposes, and reshapes. I am still sitting with the bittersweetness of it all. Writing again feels like a small step toward making sense of the pieces.