What happens when the best laid plans fall apart? The events of the past year have disrupted all facets of daily life. The pandemic-driven crises has been a significant stress test on the academy; disrupting teaching practices, research activities, and the every-day motions of academic life. In this talk I focus on my own, very intimate experience with this disruption, tracing the journey from the collapse of my dissertation project due to CoVid-19 to the creation of a new research trajectory. Along this journey, I highlight the precarity of academic life (particularly, for graduate students), the emotional toll the academy can take (and can make), and strategies for getting by. Ultimately, I use this journey as a guide towards a need feminist scholars have pointed to for decades; that care and care-full practices and relations are a necessity, and that many of the spaces we inhabit exhibit a distinct lack of care.