As a first-generation university graduate with a PhD degree from the University of Amsterdam and working in German academia for more than three years, in this piece I reflect upon my academic trajectory so far. Looking back at my tenuous relationship with academia over the last decade and the struggles I have encountered as a minority woman in India and a person of colour in Europe, in this short piece, I further contemplate upon the postcolonial predicament of unbelonging and the embodied negotiations I continue to make as a temporary jobholder and a part of the growing international academic precariat.