#futureofhe

      A life of an adjunct comes in many different guises and complexities

                                                    Love

     I love what I do.

     My father was a truck driver.  No one in our family went to college.  When I decided to be an English teacher, I was supported in my endeavors by my husband.  With his support, I was the first female in my family to graduate from college.  I taught high school briefly, but I knew I was destined to be a college professor and a writer.  While married, I worked for over a decade as an adjunct and my meager income was enough as it supplemented his income.  The work satisfied my need to share my knowledge about literature and writing.  I began to publish poems and non-fiction.  I won awards for my work.  I performed my poetry.  I published a chapbook of poetry.  I edited books.  I knew that this profession was my destiny.  My calling.  I ignored others who tell me to find more lucrative, “grown up” work.  I did not work primarily for money.  I worked because I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and teach my students more about writing and reading.  In these respects, my life was an open and lovely book.                                                                       

                                    Desperation

     2007.  Things shifted.

     After a divorce and a particularly rough year of working at several schools to pay my bills, I received a letter to join a college ceremony celebrating adjuncts.  Unfortunately, I declined as my work schedule did not allow me time to receive my honor.  Being on my own, and not trained to do any other work, I began to think about the work that I do.   I wrote a letter which appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal  titled “Adjunct to Heaven,” where I chronicled my frustrations related to my love of the work I do and my hatred for being underpaid and underappreciated.  I shared my mixed emotions over my passion for teaching which conflicted with my desire to tell people what is reallyhappening in the colleges.  I signed my name to the letter. The next day, only three people approached me.  One teacher came up to me and told me that he enjoyed what I wrote.  I received an email from a retired woman with thirty years’ experience as an adjunct who asked me where she could get her award?  She told me that in all those years of working as an adjunct, she never received any acknowledgments or thanks.   A complete stranger from California writes to me to tell me that if I really need help, he and his wife might be able to send me a little financial help now and again, if I get in a pinch. 

     Other than that, business as usual.

                                        GivingMy Blood

     Fast forward a few years: I am asked to join the New Faculty Majority for Adjuncts.  By this time, I have resigned myself to working at multiple colleges where not only do I not have medical benefits,but my hours have been drastically reduced by at least one of the colleges where I work.  The response is the school’s partial response to avoid paying medical benefits as a result of the Affordable Health Care Act.  My income is the lowest it has been in twenty years of teaching.  It does not even reach the average listed on the brochure that the New Faculty Majority is distributing.  I am not sure how I amgoing to make it financially.  I am not sure how I will keep my house.  To add insult to injury, I must fill out a time sheet every week reporting my hours, which may or may not reflect the hours I have actually worked.  It has to be under thirty hours.  Some weeks I work many more than that, and other weeks much less, but I can never go over the hours allotted, or a warning will be issued.  One of my classes is reduced from a four credit down to a three credit, which means I will be paid less for the same amount of work. That summer I find myself in dire straits.   I am out of money.  I sell everything I can possibly think of that might bring in some cash.  And then I have nothing left to sell, someone tells me that I can sell my plasma.  So, I do.  I am shocked and amazed to discover that there are other professional looking people at the center.    It is a humbling experience and I am shocked to see professionals with brief cases mixed in with the unemployed around me.

                                      Frustration 2013

       One of the colleges where I work on the side, lets many of its brick and mortar teachers go in order to beef up its online offerings and cut down on costs, and so I apply for unemployment.   I am toldto ask for support from my primary college; someone who can be there for me during my telephone conference to fight for my unemployment.  I ask a professor who has formerly served as a union member and she tells me NO.  She says that it would be a conflict of interest.  I win the case without her on two counts: 1) I was laid off from one school, and 2) my other school does not give me a letter of assurance until one week before school starts.  

      The next year letters of reasonable assurance are sent out a month before classes start to prevent Instructors from applying for unemployment.  There is still no real assurance that the classes will be offered.  So in essence, I have subjected myself to the stress of being a twenty year employee with a continual semester by semester hope. 

                             Hopes Raised and Dashed 

NPR’s national Education correspondent, Claudio Sanchez, is sitting across my dining room table.  Although I don’t have the money, I run out and buy bagels and coffee for his visit.  He talks to me for forty minutes. He refuses coffee.  I ask to remain anonymous, but he tells me that the radio station reserves “anonymous” for people whose lives might be in danger.  And my life is NOT in danger?  Did I mention that I sold everything I could to pay my utilities and put groceries in my fridge?  Did I mention that I have bald tires on my car and I am driving to teach every day? Nonetheless, I am passionate about speaking with him and I give him permission to use my name.  I believe in the adjunct cause. I am honored to speak with Mr. Sanchez whose work I admire.  I share a poem I wrote about the adjunct’s plight.  I discuss what I have been prompted to say.   When the radio programs airs, almost all of my conversation is deleted. In the name of sensationalism for the cause, the only words heard are my tears on national radio.   I crawl back into my adjunct hole and hope that my efforts mean something, anything—-for those in their adjunct fight.    

                                        Anger & Fear

      On a rare occasion of relaxation between multiple jobs of teaching, tutoring, writing and editing to eke together a living, my Chinese ESL student and I go out for a relaxing lunch—-a break from her English studies and my career concerns.    At the table next to us are two men and a woman dressed in black suits.  It is apparent that they are not worried about their bill as they immediately order expensive appetizers.   I eavesdrop:  The man who eventually pays the bill is chatting about his upcoming sabbatical and the woman asks him: “Won’t you be missed at the college when you are gone?”  His answer makes my heart drop in disgust:  “Oh, I’ll be fine.  We have tons of underpaid adjuncts dying for work.”  If it were a movie, and I was an actress, I would have taken my glass of water and thrown it into his face.  But, I refrain.  This is not an isolated case of one man being sarcastic at the plight of an adjunct. It is an ongoing national event.  I try to enjoy the rest of my meal, but his words eat at my heart.  Later, I ask myself: Why do I stay?  Why do I allow this abuse to continue?  Where is this anger coming from? 

And, more importantly: Who am I angry at?  And, what do I want to see happen?  I can no longer deny that I am an activist for this cause.

                                              Resolve

   In my Literature classes, I am teaching a story by Ralph Ellison entitled “Battle Royal.”  The story comes from his book The Invisible Man.  In his writings, Ellison fights to be seen and heard.   I believethis is the resolve of the New Faculty Majority: to be seen, and to be heard. I have worked twenty years, primarily as a dedicated English instructor at one college, and it has done its best to provide me classes and work opportunities over the years; I have truly enjoyed my work, my co-workers and my peers. I do not hold any grudges toward them, and I see some of the restraints imposed upon their own academic careers.   I also understand their reluctance to speak up.      But I cannot deny my passion for change and respect for my efforts and the efforts of my fellow college adjunct instructors across the United States.  And when my fear takes hold, I have to remind myself that this resolve and fight is not new to me:  I was once fired from the best work position I ever had as a full time instructor and department chair for profit college because I could no longer bear to watch my  students come to school on the bus after dropping their own children off to school.  Students in poverty, with no transportation, and little food.   I could not bear knowing that the school where I taught had relinquished some of its accreditation, and finally—-when they asked me the truth: I told them.  Honesty cost me the best income I ever had. So why am I angry?  What do I expect?

     I do not expect full-time employment, although that would be nice.  I know that this is a rare commodity.  But, what I do expect is a yearly contract that guarantees steady employment; I expect a living wage and possible health benefits.  I expect that I will not have to be forced to lie about the hours I work when there are weeks that I work beyond the thirty hours. I also expect a chance to be available for my students when they need me for reference letters and consultations.

      And finally—- and most importantly, if I, and my fellow adjunct instructors, must give blood—-

      Let it not only be for our rights,

      Let it also be for our students.