ABSTRACT
Mid career administrators find themselves at the crossroads, with some power and authority yet not enough for division-wide decisions. It’s neither good nor bad; it just is. This place in between is familiar to mid career professionals from poor and working-class roots and their lived experience in the academy: a place of somewhere in the middle requiring the skill to exist within both ambiguity and certainty. Not always having a clear direction or answer on how to best navigate parts of life yet moving forward with, mostly, success. Effectively navigating the complexity is shared in the stories from Sara C. Furr at University of Chicago, Jacinda M. Félix Haro at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, and Sally G. Parish at University of Memphis. Their stories help us better understand the tension in living somewhere in the middle regardless of degrees, paycheck, or positionality.
