Can you tell I'm excited? I am.
I haven't had insurance since I moved back from Canada and last month, thanks to Obamacare, I finally, finally, finally qualified for Medicaid because of the lowered income requirements. I was rejected twice before because, as an adjunct, I barely made too much money - just not enough money to actually be able to afford health insurance. In August I was denied Medicaid because I made $72 too much per month. In October, after my summer job was over, I was told to reapply and then denied again because I made $2 too much per month.
Two dollars.
I know there has to be a limit, but in what world does an extra $2 or even $72 mean someone can afford health insurance? It was so frustrating. I shed a tear or two over this, out of sheer frustration alone. Finally, though, a case worker called in December because they were reviewing applications to see who would qualify under Obamacare. I more than qualified, especially since I won't be teaching next semester and have only my part-time job to rely on now.
My card already came in the mail. I called today to choose the plan and primary card provider I want. Tomorrow I get to call to make an appointment for a physical. A physical! Woohoo!
Showing posts with label money woes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money woes. Show all posts
January 2, 2014
October 1, 2013
Affordable Care for Adjuncts?
Today is the day. Today is the day Obamacare goes into effect. Today is the day Obamacare goes into effect and I get to fill out my application for Medicaid.
Medicaid? Yes, Medicaid. I don't make enough money as an adjunct to afford health insurance, even through Obamacare, so I have been told that I need to apply for Medicaid.
I came to this understanding at a meeting at my school that was supposed to explain the non-existent changes to the school's insurance plan and answer any questions any employees might have. The school's insurance agent was very nice, explaining that, because my school's insurance plan actually exceeds the platinum level of coverage in Obamacare, employees have nothing to worry about, although they could opt out and buy their own, lesser coverage, presumably to save themselves some money.
Here was my exact train of thought as I processed this information, "Better than the platinum level of coverage? That's amazing. Who on earth would choose to opt out of that?...Wait. No. What the hell? That is bullshit. Couldn't the school drop down a level of coverage and extend benefits to more of their employees? Or drop down a level of coverage and pay us a wage that gives us a fighting chance of being able to purchase insurance ourselves?"
That's the problem, of course. It's lovely that my school offers such a supposedly fantastic plan, but it does me no good. Obamacare does me no good, either, as much as I am a firm believer in the necessity of universal healthcare. It does me no good because I don't make enough to buy my own insurance. It does me no good - in fact, it hurts my situation - thanks to the stupid decision on the part of the IRS that says anyone teaching more than two college classes is a full-time employee and must be insured by the college, resulting, as expected, in adjuncts' class loads getting decimated, further affecting our ability to cobble together a living, let alone purchase health insurance.
On a side note, I would like to see whatever geniuses at the IRS who came up with that decision try to teach two classes and work on those classes less than forty hours a week.
Still, as I've read more and more about the #IamMargaretMary tragedy and watched the government shut down over Obamacare and I've read all of people's angry tweets and raging posts on Facebook - on both sides of the issue - I have been, aside from my initial blog post and tweets about Margaret Mary's death, relatively silent.
It's not that I'm not angry. I'm furious. Of course I'm furious. I'm also at a loss. I hear people saying all these dreadful things about poor people being too lazy to get a job or being happy to mooch off the system because they are all drug addicts or not spending their money on "the right things." I read posts with people joking that it's funny how people can't pay for their own health insurance, but they can pay for a smartphone.
Ha ha. Yes, that's hilarious. I have an iPhone, I confess. Shame on me. Show me a health insurance plan that costs the $35 per month that I pay for my data plan and I would gladly purchase it. But let's have it be a useful plan that doesn't require a $10,000 deductible and only lets me visit one doctor in the state, ok?
I hear these awful comments and I want to scream that I AM THAT POOR PERSON. I am the person who cannot afford health insurance, or rent, or my student loans, or a car payment. I live with my parents and have lived with my parents for sixteen months because of my financial situation. I'm trying to finish my dissertation and bartend during the summer tourist season to help make ends meet since what I make as an adjunct is laughable, but those ends don't meet.
Those ends never meet. How can they meet with $150,000 in student loans? How can they meet when I drive 45 minutes each way, three times a week, to teach and gas costs $3.40 per gallon? How can they meet when, every time I feel myself start to get on top of my bills, something always happen? My dog gets sick, or my car breaks down, or I get sick and am forced to go to the doctor to get a prescription, spending $300 just to get simple antibiotics after being sick for three straight weeks and not being able to take it anymore. Yes, I am that poor person who isn't spending their money on "the right things."
But let's do the math, shall we? Let's see just how much I make an hour teaching "part-time." Keeping in mind that the national average per class for adjuncts is somewhere around $5,000, I earn $2,100 per class. $2,100 over sixteen weeks of teaching - because no one preps for a class before the semester starts, right? - is $131.25 per week. Since I naturally don't work 40 hours per week because I don't have a "full" course load, let's say I work 25 hours a week (I can barely control the shaking rage I feel at the assumption I work so little as a professor, but, sure, let's go with it). $131.25 per week divided by the ridiculous assumption of a 25-hour work week means I get paid, drumroll, $5.25 per hour. That's $2.00 under my state's minimum wage requirements and, like I said, 25 hours per week is some sort of insane joke of an estimate. Just for fun, let's see how much I make assuming a 40-hour week. Again, $131.25 divided by 40 this time is...$3.28 per hour. $3.28 per hour to teach a college class.
How did I get here? I did all the things I was told would help me make a good life for myself. I work hard, I am educated - well-educated, possibly too well-educated. In other words, I bought into the myth of the American dream and yet, here I am, living with my parents and applying for Medicaid.
As I sit here filling out my Medicaid application and trying to choke down the humiliation of needing Medicaid, I am going to let that number run through my head as a constant reminder of why I am about to try to go on Medicaid.
Yes, I am that person who "mooches off the system." Wouldn't you? It's a system that pays me $3.28 per hour.
Medicaid? Yes, Medicaid. I don't make enough money as an adjunct to afford health insurance, even through Obamacare, so I have been told that I need to apply for Medicaid.
I came to this understanding at a meeting at my school that was supposed to explain the non-existent changes to the school's insurance plan and answer any questions any employees might have. The school's insurance agent was very nice, explaining that, because my school's insurance plan actually exceeds the platinum level of coverage in Obamacare, employees have nothing to worry about, although they could opt out and buy their own, lesser coverage, presumably to save themselves some money.
Here was my exact train of thought as I processed this information, "Better than the platinum level of coverage? That's amazing. Who on earth would choose to opt out of that?...Wait. No. What the hell? That is bullshit. Couldn't the school drop down a level of coverage and extend benefits to more of their employees? Or drop down a level of coverage and pay us a wage that gives us a fighting chance of being able to purchase insurance ourselves?"
That's the problem, of course. It's lovely that my school offers such a supposedly fantastic plan, but it does me no good. Obamacare does me no good, either, as much as I am a firm believer in the necessity of universal healthcare. It does me no good because I don't make enough to buy my own insurance. It does me no good - in fact, it hurts my situation - thanks to the stupid decision on the part of the IRS that says anyone teaching more than two college classes is a full-time employee and must be insured by the college, resulting, as expected, in adjuncts' class loads getting decimated, further affecting our ability to cobble together a living, let alone purchase health insurance.
On a side note, I would like to see whatever geniuses at the IRS who came up with that decision try to teach two classes and work on those classes less than forty hours a week.
Still, as I've read more and more about the #IamMargaretMary tragedy and watched the government shut down over Obamacare and I've read all of people's angry tweets and raging posts on Facebook - on both sides of the issue - I have been, aside from my initial blog post and tweets about Margaret Mary's death, relatively silent.
It's not that I'm not angry. I'm furious. Of course I'm furious. I'm also at a loss. I hear people saying all these dreadful things about poor people being too lazy to get a job or being happy to mooch off the system because they are all drug addicts or not spending their money on "the right things." I read posts with people joking that it's funny how people can't pay for their own health insurance, but they can pay for a smartphone.
Ha ha. Yes, that's hilarious. I have an iPhone, I confess. Shame on me. Show me a health insurance plan that costs the $35 per month that I pay for my data plan and I would gladly purchase it. But let's have it be a useful plan that doesn't require a $10,000 deductible and only lets me visit one doctor in the state, ok?
I hear these awful comments and I want to scream that I AM THAT POOR PERSON. I am the person who cannot afford health insurance, or rent, or my student loans, or a car payment. I live with my parents and have lived with my parents for sixteen months because of my financial situation. I'm trying to finish my dissertation and bartend during the summer tourist season to help make ends meet since what I make as an adjunct is laughable, but those ends don't meet.
Those ends never meet. How can they meet with $150,000 in student loans? How can they meet when I drive 45 minutes each way, three times a week, to teach and gas costs $3.40 per gallon? How can they meet when, every time I feel myself start to get on top of my bills, something always happen? My dog gets sick, or my car breaks down, or I get sick and am forced to go to the doctor to get a prescription, spending $300 just to get simple antibiotics after being sick for three straight weeks and not being able to take it anymore. Yes, I am that poor person who isn't spending their money on "the right things."
But let's do the math, shall we? Let's see just how much I make an hour teaching "part-time." Keeping in mind that the national average per class for adjuncts is somewhere around $5,000, I earn $2,100 per class. $2,100 over sixteen weeks of teaching - because no one preps for a class before the semester starts, right? - is $131.25 per week. Since I naturally don't work 40 hours per week because I don't have a "full" course load, let's say I work 25 hours a week (I can barely control the shaking rage I feel at the assumption I work so little as a professor, but, sure, let's go with it). $131.25 per week divided by the ridiculous assumption of a 25-hour work week means I get paid, drumroll, $5.25 per hour. That's $2.00 under my state's minimum wage requirements and, like I said, 25 hours per week is some sort of insane joke of an estimate. Just for fun, let's see how much I make assuming a 40-hour week. Again, $131.25 divided by 40 this time is...$3.28 per hour. $3.28 per hour to teach a college class.
How did I get here? I did all the things I was told would help me make a good life for myself. I work hard, I am educated - well-educated, possibly too well-educated. In other words, I bought into the myth of the American dream and yet, here I am, living with my parents and applying for Medicaid.
As I sit here filling out my Medicaid application and trying to choke down the humiliation of needing Medicaid, I am going to let that number run through my head as a constant reminder of why I am about to try to go on Medicaid.
Yes, I am that person who "mooches off the system." Wouldn't you? It's a system that pays me $3.28 per hour.
May 29, 2013
What a Year, eh?*
It's been a year since I left Canada and moved back to Delaware to live with my parents. I fled for a lot of reasons, but the big one was poverty and it caused most of the other problems. Paying tuition, rent, utilities, food, and all of Dewey's vet bills and prescription bills...it was all too much. My savings were gone (no surprise after five years of grad school), my funding ran out the year before, and I really just didn't see any way to survive on my own any more. I was at the end of my rope. I had no idea what I was going to do or how I was going to pay rent or buy food.
Over a year of this stress turned me into an emotional mess. I cried. A lot. I slept a lot. I curled up into a ball on the couch a lot. I felt as though I would not be able to handle any more problems that came my way. I was on the edge of a breakdown for a really long time. All of that added up to seemingly insurmountable writer's block, too, making the dissertation a frustrating reminder that, at 35, I am a failure both as a PhD student who can no longer write and as an adult who can not support herself and has to move back in with her parents.
This past year has been brutal, even with the help of my parents. They have been more than generous, helped out more than I ever wanted, and did all of this with a "we're so happy you're home" attitude that is truthful and meant to assuage my guilt but does not. I had to go back to waiting tables, working for the same company I worked for when I was sixteen. That was humiliating and yet here I am, working at the same place this summer because the money is too good to pass up. I found out more than I wanted about how precarious and soul-crushing life as an adjunct can be. I did not get to go to my best friend's wedding in the Bahamas, despite the fact that she's been my best friend for thirty years and she is more like a sister than a friend. I have basically spent the past year either at work or on my parents' couch, being unable to afford to do literally anything.
Still, I have had some successes. I presented at the MWCBS and the NACBS. The NACBS was a huge success, with a lot of networking and, more importantly, great feedback on my paper from scholars I really admire. I attended DHSI last summer and DHWI in January, thanks to scholarships and funding from my school. I taught two new classes and, despite some hiccups, really enjoyed the classes and my students, who mostly seemed to reciprocate, aside from a couple (one in particular) Negative Nellies. I'm going to DHSI next week, thanks to another scholarship, and in just over a month, I'm presenting at a Jacobite conference in Paris (again, thanks to funding). The NACBS, DHWI, DHSI, and the Paris conference have all been part of my master plan for years now and it feels amazing, if a little frightening, to actually see that plan become a reality.
The best part, though, is that my writing mojo is back. It's back! Not only am I writing, but my supervisor actually seems to like what I'm writing. He said it was "mature and authoritative," among other compliments that I can't actually remember right now. The pressure from my supervisor leaving for a new job in Scotland is immense and I do still panic that I won't get finished in time, but at least it is helping and not throwing me into a terrified, immobilized stupor, balled up on my couch, like I would have been in last year if this had happened.
The change in my mental state is something I did not expect. I am not expecting to collapse in a heaping puddle of tears at the slightest setback, offhand comment, or if I don't hear from a friend for a few days. I'm no longer terrified of failing, of disappointing my supervisor, my family, myself. Don't get me wrong - I still have a lot of self-doubt, but what grad student doesn't? From all the blogs I read, forget grad student, what academic doesn't? Still, I am recovering from financial disaster and I am writing. Both of those are things I would not have thought possible a year ago.
I owe all of this to my parents. Without them, none of this would have been possible. I doubt they know how grateful I am, unless they understood that all the cooking and baking I've done this year has been my way of thanking them. At least now they can read about how thankful I am.
*Despite my best efforts, "eh?" used to, and still does, pop into my conversations. What's that all aboot?
Over a year of this stress turned me into an emotional mess. I cried. A lot. I slept a lot. I curled up into a ball on the couch a lot. I felt as though I would not be able to handle any more problems that came my way. I was on the edge of a breakdown for a really long time. All of that added up to seemingly insurmountable writer's block, too, making the dissertation a frustrating reminder that, at 35, I am a failure both as a PhD student who can no longer write and as an adult who can not support herself and has to move back in with her parents.
This past year has been brutal, even with the help of my parents. They have been more than generous, helped out more than I ever wanted, and did all of this with a "we're so happy you're home" attitude that is truthful and meant to assuage my guilt but does not. I had to go back to waiting tables, working for the same company I worked for when I was sixteen. That was humiliating and yet here I am, working at the same place this summer because the money is too good to pass up. I found out more than I wanted about how precarious and soul-crushing life as an adjunct can be. I did not get to go to my best friend's wedding in the Bahamas, despite the fact that she's been my best friend for thirty years and she is more like a sister than a friend. I have basically spent the past year either at work or on my parents' couch, being unable to afford to do literally anything.
Still, I have had some successes. I presented at the MWCBS and the NACBS. The NACBS was a huge success, with a lot of networking and, more importantly, great feedback on my paper from scholars I really admire. I attended DHSI last summer and DHWI in January, thanks to scholarships and funding from my school. I taught two new classes and, despite some hiccups, really enjoyed the classes and my students, who mostly seemed to reciprocate, aside from a couple (one in particular) Negative Nellies. I'm going to DHSI next week, thanks to another scholarship, and in just over a month, I'm presenting at a Jacobite conference in Paris (again, thanks to funding). The NACBS, DHWI, DHSI, and the Paris conference have all been part of my master plan for years now and it feels amazing, if a little frightening, to actually see that plan become a reality.
The best part, though, is that my writing mojo is back. It's back! Not only am I writing, but my supervisor actually seems to like what I'm writing. He said it was "mature and authoritative," among other compliments that I can't actually remember right now. The pressure from my supervisor leaving for a new job in Scotland is immense and I do still panic that I won't get finished in time, but at least it is helping and not throwing me into a terrified, immobilized stupor, balled up on my couch, like I would have been in last year if this had happened.
The change in my mental state is something I did not expect. I am not expecting to collapse in a heaping puddle of tears at the slightest setback, offhand comment, or if I don't hear from a friend for a few days. I'm no longer terrified of failing, of disappointing my supervisor, my family, myself. Don't get me wrong - I still have a lot of self-doubt, but what grad student doesn't? From all the blogs I read, forget grad student, what academic doesn't? Still, I am recovering from financial disaster and I am writing. Both of those are things I would not have thought possible a year ago.
I owe all of this to my parents. Without them, none of this would have been possible. I doubt they know how grateful I am, unless they understood that all the cooking and baking I've done this year has been my way of thanking them. At least now they can read about how thankful I am.
*Despite my best efforts, "eh?" used to, and still does, pop into my conversations. What's that all aboot?
February 26, 2013
February Sucks
I basically lost my job yesterday. I can't find it, but I thought I'd written something on here somewhere about possibly teaching this summer because the school is making a push for core requirement classes, like the survey classes I teach, to be available during the summer and that adjuncts can teach them, if full-time faculty don't want to, despite the fact that they are trying to cut back on adjunct hours, which has something, I suspect, to do with this new trend of cutting adjunct hours to prepare for the Affordable Care Act, in addition to enrolment concerns, which they claim is the reason, yet all the numbers are in line with at least the last three years, so to say I'm skeptical about this is putting it mildly. The point of that terrible run-on sentence was supposed to be that I was trying not to get my hopes up about those summer classes actually happening, but I sort of did, and yesterday I met with my chair to, basically, plead my case as to why they should give me a contract for next year, rather than use me as an adjunct and risk losing me, the British history I can teach because the department doesn't offer British history currently, and my digital humanities training, which would be very useful because the school is trying to get on the online class bus and I at least am familiar with best practices in digital pedagogy and am the only person there who has experience with teaching online classes, which the other professors have no interest in learning about or starting because they are all hoping to retire in the next few years. Seriously. The three full-time professors in the department all want to retire within five years at the most. There is one visiting professor, who they want to hire TT for the next semester, but that's questionable right now with the current state of things. There are also three adjuncts, including one who is moving to Georgia this summer, one who teaches Museum Studies and World Civ only, and me. So, the department is...in trouble.
Anyways, his response was that he was sorry they had misled me since our very first meeting, but they won't be able to offer me a contract because the school is cutting back so drastically on adjuncts and on visiting professors, etc. Of course, if the numbers improve, I'd be the first person they offer classes to, but only on adjunct pay and they wouldn't know until July. As for the summer classes, the department has decided not to offer them, despite the push by the school, because the department does not think students will enroll in them.
Basically, the department is resisting all changes the school is trying to make (and don't get me wrong - I don't agree with all of the changes, but some of the changes do seem sensible, from both a financial and an academic standpoint) and actively trying to recruit people to stand in resistance with them. Instead of going along with ideas that might even help the department, like offering more classes to attract more students, they have decided to defy ALL the changes/mandates and jump on a sinking ship. Am I bitter? Yes. Did I think all of this prior to yesterday? Absolutely.
I left the meeting in a weird mood. It was quite disheartening to hear that I most likely will not return to a school that I actually like, but, at the same time, it was kind of freeing. At least now I know. That's why I set up the meeting. I was tired of the promises and half-promises they were making and all of the rumors swirling around the school. So, now I know.
I went home after the meeting, which was the plan all along, not a reaction to the meeting, because one of our dogs, Winnie, had lymphoma and this weekend she really deteriorated, hardly being able to walk to go outside and only with help standing up because she had a massive tumor, by her left rear leg, that tripled in size the past few days. I wanted to go home and make sure she was ok and spend some time with her because it was time to put her to sleep and we did that last night, which is an entirely different kind of horrendous experience and one that I am tired of going through and never want to go through again and would never wish anyone to have to make that decision for their pet.
Winnie just turned twelve last month. She was so sweet. She was also my beloved Dewey's girlfriend. Dewey was only seven or eight months old when we brought Winnie home; they grew up together and were, honestly, insane together. They even had puppies together eventually. (That still creeps me out because I thought of them as besties, but besties don't matter in dog show world, where good genes rule and those two have excellent genes.) My parents kept the two most adorable puppies, who I adore almost as much as Dewey. They are, after all, his babies. He might hate them because they fight him for my attention (please, 99% of the time, he wins), but I love them.
This is Winnie, being obnoxious to my mother, who bought a throw rug for Winnie to sleep on and be able to stand up on because the linoleum was very difficult. Winnie, as you can see, thumbed her nose at the rug, despite it being placed exactly where she liked to lay, and decided to lay down next to it instead. I have no doubt she learned the obnoxiousness from Dewey, the master.
So, goodbye, Winnie, and thank you so much for making us all happy and loving Dewey and giving me Princess (if you think that's a ridiculous name, you should hear her full name, though I take full responsibility for both and, trust me, she more than lives up to her obnoxious name) and Tank. We will all miss you. We already do.
February 20, 2013
Crisis of Confidence
Yesterday was a bad day. It was one of those days where fear and anxiety wrap themselves around you, creating a cocoon of self-doubt that seems impossible to break. I basically spent the entire day on my couch, alternately between feeling sorry for myself and crying my eyes out. I went to a library fundraising dinner with my parents, which was my idea and so I couldn't back out of it, and even teared up at dinner. I even cried in the shower, hoping I would feel better because sometimes a good long cry in the shower helps. I don't know why it does, but it does. Except for yesterday.
I could not shake the overwhelming feeling that I will never finish this dissertation; that even if I do finish it I won't find a job; that I have wasted the majority of my life in pursuit of a goal that will not happen; that I have no social life because I make no money and sit at home every night, watching tv and wondering what my friends are doing; that I am losing one of my best friends because I can't afford to go to her wedding, even though she says she's fine and knows it's not my fault, but somehow her almost-daily phone calls and daily texts have all come to a screeching halt and I'm lucky if I get a quick text back to any one of mine; and that I am a failure at life because, at 35, I have had to move back in with my parents, who support me financially because I am basically unemployable, being somehow overqualified and underqualified, all at once, for many, many jobs and my parents are not really in the best position to help me, particularly for as long as has been necessary and seemingly will never end, so not only are my finances in shambles, but if something doesn't happen soon, I could seriously hurt my parents' future, too.
So. Today has been slightly better, if only because I had to lecture today, so I had to put on clothes and make-up and restrain from bursting into tears at any given moment. That doesn't mean I don't want to cry, just that I refuse to cry in my office because the walls do not go all the way up to the ceiling and people will hear me. At least I managed to type this post without crying. Perhaps this will be a turning point. I really, really need it to be.
I could not shake the overwhelming feeling that I will never finish this dissertation; that even if I do finish it I won't find a job; that I have wasted the majority of my life in pursuit of a goal that will not happen; that I have no social life because I make no money and sit at home every night, watching tv and wondering what my friends are doing; that I am losing one of my best friends because I can't afford to go to her wedding, even though she says she's fine and knows it's not my fault, but somehow her almost-daily phone calls and daily texts have all come to a screeching halt and I'm lucky if I get a quick text back to any one of mine; and that I am a failure at life because, at 35, I have had to move back in with my parents, who support me financially because I am basically unemployable, being somehow overqualified and underqualified, all at once, for many, many jobs and my parents are not really in the best position to help me, particularly for as long as has been necessary and seemingly will never end, so not only are my finances in shambles, but if something doesn't happen soon, I could seriously hurt my parents' future, too.
So. Today has been slightly better, if only because I had to lecture today, so I had to put on clothes and make-up and restrain from bursting into tears at any given moment. That doesn't mean I don't want to cry, just that I refuse to cry in my office because the walls do not go all the way up to the ceiling and people will hear me. At least I managed to type this post without crying. Perhaps this will be a turning point. I really, really need it to be.
February 6, 2013
I need to practice my French!
I haven't told many people this, but I'm just too excited to hold it in much longer. It looks like my paper was accepted for the Jacobite Studies Trust conference in July!
This is big. Huge. ENORMOUS. I may be more excited about this conference than I was about presenting at the last NACBS. I presented at the last JST conference in Glasgow a few years ago and loved it. Back then, I didn't even consider myself a Jacobite historian, but that conference changed things. Yes, I work on Scottish Episcopalians who were, for the most part, Jacobites, but I approach them from a religious angle, not a political one, so while I technically have always been a Jacobite historian, I didn't actually embrace that until the Glasgow conference.
To say I'm really looking forward to being around "my" people for an entire weekend is an understatement. It's just so nice to get to enjoy an entire conference, rather than having to pick and choose from the panels you might most be interested in and hope you're right. Plus, I need to network again (I haven't been in Scotland in over a year and I constantly worry that people are forgetting about me), pitch my idea for my post-doc project, and see if any of the big whigs bite, I suppose.
As usual, funding is the big problem. I'm hoping there's at least some funding available for grad students. I'm looking for other grants, too, but I'm a bit behind the ball because I didn't hear anything at all for months. I still have time, so I'm hoping the good luck continues and I get enough funding to go. I feel like my future is riding on this conference. I know it sounds silly and very dramatic and is not necessarily true, but I want this post-doc project to work out and I want it to happen in Scotland.
So. Interwebs, send me all the good juju you have, please! I could use it.
Did I mention the conference is in Paris? Naturellement!
December 20, 2012
The agony of adjuncting
My classes for next semester got cut. Instead of teaching four classes, I will now be teaching one class. One. Class. My already extremely low wages just got reduced by 75%.
It took a full day for exactly what this means to sink in for me. The immediate financial repercussions were obvious, but then it hit me that I also wouldn't be able to go to two big conferences this summer or DHSI (despite the scholarship that would pay for tuition). I was also supposed to go to Sicily with my school for a travel trip because next year they 1) want me to still be there and 2) want me take the travel class to Scotland and teach or co-teach the travel class.
These are big disappointments, but the worst - the heartbreaking part - is that I can't afford to go to my best friend's wedding in March. It's in the Bahamas. The airfare, the resort, and the dress are not actually that expensive, but will still cost more than half of what I'll make for the semester. We've been friends for 30 years. We grew up next door to each other. She is the closest thing I have to a sister. I'm the maid of honor. And I don't have a choice but to back out of the wedding.
It took a full day for exactly what this means to sink in for me. The immediate financial repercussions were obvious, but then it hit me that I also wouldn't be able to go to two big conferences this summer or DHSI (despite the scholarship that would pay for tuition). I was also supposed to go to Sicily with my school for a travel trip because next year they 1) want me to still be there and 2) want me take the travel class to Scotland and teach or co-teach the travel class.
These are big disappointments, but the worst - the heartbreaking part - is that I can't afford to go to my best friend's wedding in March. It's in the Bahamas. The airfare, the resort, and the dress are not actually that expensive, but will still cost more than half of what I'll make for the semester. We've been friends for 30 years. We grew up next door to each other. She is the closest thing I have to a sister. I'm the maid of honor. And I don't have a choice but to back out of the wedding.
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