Having recently completed my first decade in China's Normal System, in this Point of Departure (PoD) I explore precarity in higher education teaching using four tools: "slipstream," "fugia hacia adelante," "exophony," and autoethnography. This is an exploration in the form of a structured performance of precarities that I witness in my praxis, e.g., geopolitical, emotional, and health. I illustrate the potential of humanities-infused social science writing to translate emotions and experiences around precarity that are "in the room" in higher education teaching (Rohrer, J. 2018. "It's in the room": Reinvigorating feminist pedagogy, contesting neoliberalism, and trumping post-truth populism. "Teaching in Higher Education" 23, n5: 576-92). In a think-piece style epilogue, I propose that perhaps our best teacher is precarity itself and our best teaching is done in precarity.