There is no review for this.
No renewal date.
No form to fill.
No committee to satisfy
with evidence of continued relevance.
I have been, it turns out,
continuous.
I have been the same person
in every contract,
through every expiry,
past every bar they raised
when I reached the one they set before.
They changed the terms.
I did not change.
That is not stubbornness.
That is a different kind of tenure.
The kind you cannot be denied
because you are the institution granting it.
The kind that does not require
a vote in your absence,
a decision made by people
who have never sat in the room
with you and a student
at the moment something shifts.
I grant it to myself.
Twenty-five years of continuous service
to the work,
to the students,
to the belief that education
belongs to the people who need it most
and not only to the people
who can get to a campus
between nine and four
on the days it is open.
I am permanent in that.
I always was.
They never had the authority to say otherwise.
They had a spreadsheet and a budget line.
That is a different kind of power entirely.
Soy permanente en mí misma. Siempre lo fui.
I am permanent within myself. I always was.
