#adjunctlife

Hi, welcome! I do really love my job. There are parts that are a bit annoying, but I know that I have it pretty good, considering how adjunct instructors are treated at a lot of universities. I love being in the classroom and interacting with students, I love lesson planning, I love the flexibility, the fact that I am challenged intellectually on a daily basis. Also the access to university resources. Grading sucks though. Also I’m sorry this got long-ish I just like talking about it. :P

I got my job basically because I had a graduate teaching assistantship for the 2nd and 3rd year of my program, and my university frequently hires its graduates because they know their training of those GTAs aligns with their philosophy/values. (Of course you have to have done a good job as a GTA and all that.) I think this fall there are 4-5 new adjuncts who graduated from the department last spring. That said, I think it was somewhat easier for me to get hired because I also have a specialty that other instructors are somewhat wary of, which is ESL (English as a second language) students. I fulfill a sort-of niche? Of course there are other instructors who specialize in that, but when you’re the one of the only ones who has that expertise, it really helps. I also worked in several teaching or tutoring positions at the university as a student.

I’d say get as much teaching and research experience as possible, and keep doing a lot of professional development work, even if you aren’t teaching at the moment. Even though my job doesn’t require it, they look to see that I am contributing to the university, the department, the field of study, etc. Which… in a way kinda sucks, because only tenured or tenure-track professors actually get paid to do that work. But I think that hiring committees value people who show they are willing to go above and beyond in the ways I previously mentioned. It’s like they want to know you are willing to do the work of a tenured professor without being willing to pay you for it. And you really have to find a balance between doing that stuff and knowing when to say no, so you don’t burn out. So for example, I’m participating in a diversity fellowship (on my own time), judging a poster conference (on my own time), attending department meetings I am not required to go to, and attending/presenting at professional development workshops and regional and national conferences (you guessed it - on my own time).

This is only somewhat related, but I’m kinda curious what your MA program was like. I have heard from several friends that their programs were pretty laid-back; they took a lot fewer courses, didn’t have to do comprehensive exams, didn’t have to do a final project/thesis/portfolio. Which, tbh, makes me really jealous? But also my program was so intense that I’m used to doing the kind of things I listed in the previous paragraph. And I think if you were in a more low-key program, it might feel a little odd or even unexpected to have to participate in a bunch of stuff just for brownie points, basically.