u/Many-Entertainer-862

Hi, everyone. While I'm not an adjunct, it felt more right posting here than the professors sub as I am in a visiting assistant professor position at a university that makes it painfully clear that we VAP's are not "real" professors. Lol.

This past school year, I worked my first year in this year-long VAP contract where I'm super grateful to have full benefits. In our handbook (which is outdated--our department worked on updating some of the language in this year, but temporary faculty aren't exactly fretted over despite our department needing a large number of us to function properly), it states that VAP's should be notified by March on our renewal status for the following year. It's July 5th, though, and no VAP has received word back yet. My director and department chair have been in contact a couple times over small arrangements like office assignments being shuffled around, but no contracts yet. When I asked my director about this, the answer was that contracts usually come out in July or August.

The problem is that I'm pregnant and due in late October. This is my first child and my first full time teaching job. I'm sick with worry that I may not be handling this the right way, but all of the advice I've received from friends, family, and former colleagues at other institutions has been to not disclose my pregnancy until I receive a contract. I'm entitled to maternity leave in the form of a semester off, which of course would the fall semester that begins the first week of September.

What would you do? I don't want to blindsight my director, despite routine mistreatment and neglect of temporary faculty. I don't want to burn this bridge, but I also don't want to screw myself out of maternity leave by sharing too much information just because I feel guilty about it.

Any advice is welcome! This has been eating at me.

Edit, and something perhaps worth mentioning: Whenever this topic comes up with my director, she always assures me that it's very likely that I will be renewed. Most VAP's do stay for three years. This doesn't provide much consolation when there is no contract, though.

I'm sorry if this isn't allowed, I just woke up from this dream and feel I'm finally ready to ask about it.

Since my brother died, I have had somewhat recurring dreams where I encounter him in some capacity but something is off and we're unable to speak to each other. Sometimes this is seeing him in person, coming to our parents' house, and is very stony faced and unanimated and nonverbal. Sometimes (as it was last night), I notice that I have an option to message him or text him or something, but for some reason I can either never actually send a message or he can never send one back. One time this dream came on in the form of finding his twitter account that he was still using, but again, I was unable to actually reach him.

My brother has been dead for more than five years now. He died suddenly and unexpectedly at 30 years old and no one got to say goodbye. It's been something I've been having to carry around with me this whole time, and I've never found any comfort in therapy or anything. I don't have a designated religion and often feel spiritually lost in general because I want to believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or something that isn't just eternal nothingness but I'm 31 now, a year older than he was when he died, and I still just have nothing I can turn to for help with these dreams. I hate this feeling that he might not be okay or at peace.

If anyone can give me an idea of what ti make of these dreams, I would be so grateful.

I'm sorry if this isn't allowed, I just woke up from this dream and feel I'm finally ready to ask about it.

Since my brother died, I have had somewhat recurring dreams where I encounter him in some capacity but something is off and we're unable to speak to each other. Sometimes this is seeing him in person, coming to our parents' house, and is very stony faced and unanimated and nonverbal. Sometimes (as it was last night), I notice that I have an option to message him or text him or something, but for some reason I can either never actually send a message or he can never send one back. One time this dream came on in the form of finding his twitter account that he was still using, but again, I was unable to actually reach him.

My brother has been dead for more than five years now. He died suddenly and unexpectedly at 30 years old and no one got to say goodbye. It's been something I've been having to carry around with me this whole time, and I've never found any comfort in therapy or anything. I don't have a designated religion and often feel spiritually lost in general because I want to believe in an afterlife or reincarnation or something that isn't just eternal nothingness but I'm 31 now, a year older than he was when he died, and I still just have nothing I can turn to for help with these dreams. I hate this feeling that he might not be okay or at peace.

If anyone can give me an idea of what ti make of these dreams, I would be so grateful.