All apologies to everyone waiting to check in! I scheduled this post for the wrong date. Clearly the first week of AcWriMo took a toll on me!
How are things going for everyone? Did you meet your goals? Come across any stumbling blocks? Want to curl up in your bed like a little baby? No? That was just me?
Here's a general idea of what to discuss, if you need a reminder:
Last Week's Goal:
Last Week's Daily Goal (if you had one):
Plan of Attack (if you had one):
Achieved (ie did you meet your goals? Did your plan of attack work?):
This Week's Goal:
This Week's Daily Goal (if you have one):
This Week's Plan of Attack:
Stay tuned - I'll post my own meager accomplishments as soon as I figure out why my students can't see their exam grades. This is not my week for technology!
November 10, 2013
November 1, 2013
AcWriMo Week 1
Welcome, everyone! To kick off AcWriMo, we are going to keep this short and sweet. After all, we have writing to do. Don't forget to sign up on the AcWriMo spreadsheet!
Let's just start with a short introduction of who you are, your goal for the month, your weekly goal, your daily goal if you have one, and, again if you have one, what your plan of attack is to accomplish your goal.
I'll start us off. I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph's Centre for Scottish Studies. I'm also an adjunct and struggle with balancing my teaching responsibilities and the need to finish my never-ending dissertation.
AcWriMo Goal: write the introduction and finish the second chapter of my dissertation.
Weekly Goal: 2100 words added to chapter two, outline introduction
Daily Goal: 300 words per day
Plan of Attack: I don't normally do this, but I created a very strict schedule this week because it's going to be a crazy grading week and my weekend is busy with family/friend time (for once!). I scheduled two hours of writing Friday, Monday, and Wednesday; one hour on Sunday; and three hours Tuesday and Thursday to make up for no time on Saturday and a short session on Sunday. For Friday, Sunday, and Monday, I plan on simply adding notes from three sources I haven't included yet. Also on Monday I will look at the other sources for the chapter to determine which ones I need to work with the rest of the week. I'm hoping that the detailed schedule I created will help me focus more and get distracted less. I also built in time for all those annoying things that pop up every day that drain my time and energy for writing, so I guess I'll see how this goes.
What about you? What are your goals, your plans? Are you going to be as tightly scheduled as I am or are you taking a looser approach?
Let's just start with a short introduction of who you are, your goal for the month, your weekly goal, your daily goal if you have one, and, again if you have one, what your plan of attack is to accomplish your goal.
I'll start us off. I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph's Centre for Scottish Studies. I'm also an adjunct and struggle with balancing my teaching responsibilities and the need to finish my never-ending dissertation.
AcWriMo Goal: write the introduction and finish the second chapter of my dissertation.
Weekly Goal: 2100 words added to chapter two, outline introduction
Daily Goal: 300 words per day
Plan of Attack: I don't normally do this, but I created a very strict schedule this week because it's going to be a crazy grading week and my weekend is busy with family/friend time (for once!). I scheduled two hours of writing Friday, Monday, and Wednesday; one hour on Sunday; and three hours Tuesday and Thursday to make up for no time on Saturday and a short session on Sunday. For Friday, Sunday, and Monday, I plan on simply adding notes from three sources I haven't included yet. Also on Monday I will look at the other sources for the chapter to determine which ones I need to work with the rest of the week. I'm hoping that the detailed schedule I created will help me focus more and get distracted less. I also built in time for all those annoying things that pop up every day that drain my time and energy for writing, so I guess I'll see how this goes.
What about you? What are your goals, your plans? Are you going to be as tightly scheduled as I am or are you taking a looser approach?
October 28, 2013
AcWriMo Writing Group???
Many of you know November is AcWriMo. If not, you can read more about the details here, thanks to all the hard work of Charlotte Frost and others.
I volunteered to be an ambassador for it this year because I find I need to force myself to recommit to my writing and keep missing out on joining my regular online writing group. While I hoped to run an in-person writing group, no one at my school has committed to the idea yet and, well, the month starts Friday.
If anyone out there is interested in a month-long AcWriMo writing group, join me here every Friday in November for extra motivation. All you need to do is commit to a small goal, add it to the comments below, and join the larger AcWriMo movement by signing up on the AcWriMo spreadsheet. You can also join the conversation by following #AcWriMo on twitter. The tips and tricks are always very helpful!
If you're like me, saying you will commit to writing is easier said than done, so this time I'm making up a writing schedule for the month. By the end of the month, I plan on being a writing god. Join me?
I volunteered to be an ambassador for it this year because I find I need to force myself to recommit to my writing and keep missing out on joining my regular online writing group. While I hoped to run an in-person writing group, no one at my school has committed to the idea yet and, well, the month starts Friday.
If anyone out there is interested in a month-long AcWriMo writing group, join me here every Friday in November for extra motivation. All you need to do is commit to a small goal, add it to the comments below, and join the larger AcWriMo movement by signing up on the AcWriMo spreadsheet. You can also join the conversation by following #AcWriMo on twitter. The tips and tricks are always very helpful!
If you're like me, saying you will commit to writing is easier said than done, so this time I'm making up a writing schedule for the month. By the end of the month, I plan on being a writing god. Join me?
 |
| Jorge Cham is a genius. |
October 23, 2013
Sink or Swim*
I am a nag. Rather, I'm not normally a nag, but I turned into a nag this semester. My students do not have their shit together at all. They miss deadlines all the time (despite a rather steep daily late penalty), ignore instructions constantly, don't do the readings on anything near resembling a regular basis, they don't take notes in class when they even bother to come to class, and then they wonder why their grades are low. By low, I mean failing.
I don't mean all of my students, obviously, but I do mean a giant chunk of them - larger than any semester I've ever seen before. For instance, eleven students out of twenty-two in one class didn't turn in a primary source analysis. That's 50%! That is shocking! ELEVEN.
(Just saying "eleven" makes me laugh and reminds me of this wonderful skit.)
You're welcome.
This is the same syllabus I've used for two other semesters with the same assignment instructions, so I'm 99% sure there isn't a problem with the clarity of my instructions, given that this has never happened before. Four of those eleven students who did submit the essay wrote it about the wrong primary source, just completely and entirely used the wrong source. Two of those students used sources from the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The class is a modern U.S. history class. I just. I can't.
Today alone I asked two students why they weren't taking notes and didn't even have a notebook out. I told three students not to put their heads down on the desk because it was class time, not nap time. I emailed a student to find out when or if she was planning on returning to class because she emailed me a week ago to tell me her grandfather was on his deathbed and she wouldn't be in class Friday and wondered if she could take the quiz Monday instead. I hadn't heard from her since, so I emailed her to make sure she was ok. She's fine, according to her email, just had a cold and so she hasn't come to class. No mention of her sick grandfather, who happens to be sick right before the second test of the semester. Did I mention her grandmother passed away last month, right before the first test of the semester? I also emailed two students whose group project is two days overdue.
I had a group discussion of FDR's Four Freedoms and Charles Wesley's response planned. I broke them into groups, told them to read the Wesley source, which was only 3/4 page long. And then I watched them. I watched them read the source and then sit there. Silent. For minutes and minutes and minutes after every group member was finished reading. This is week ten in the semester and the class is very used to group work and discussing and they generally do a good job of it. Today they were silent and I was fed up. After ten minutes of silence, I actually said, "Did you forget that you are meant to discuss the two sources with your group?" I gave good instructions about what to discuss; I'm just not sharing them here for the sake of brevity in an already long post. Some of the good students actually chuckled, like I'm hilarious, but they were silent, too. What the frick? After my sarcasm, they did discuss them together and I went around to each group and everything was fine, as was the eventual discussion with the whole class - better than fine, good actually, but the damage was done.
I came to the realization, as I sat there watching them not discussing the sources, that I'm putting too much effort into this. I'm enabling them even though that was not my intention and even though I'm trying to teach them responsibility. I'm not their mother. Why am I doing all of this? If they don't care AT ALL, why do I?
It's just...I hate to see students failing. I hate to see them slipping through the cracks, so I try to follow up with them when I see it happening, but now I am that professor who harps on her students to put their phones away (every freaking class with one student in particular), take notes, wake up, turn their assignments in, nag, nag, nag. I don't want to be that professor. I don't like that professor. No one likes that professor.
I can feel the students who do their work getting frustrated. They roll their eyes at students who claim they had no idea a quiz was today or their paper had to be uploaded to turnitin.com. They are fed up with those students and so am I.
Weeks ago, I warned that the reminders would end and that they were on their own and yet I've found myself slipping back into the same habit because so many of them are not doing the work or paying attention to the syllabus. My nagging ends today. I am burnt out. I have no more to give. I can't help students who don't help themselves and so I am done. I have done all that I can. I have done far more than some of the FT professors in my department would do and I am just an adjunct. So, I'm calling it. I'm done.
I'm choosing to focus on the students who do their work, who come to class, who make an effort. There will be no more tracking students down about their assignments. No more nagging. No more lectures about how to act as a college student. They've heard it from me at least twice before and I know they've heard it from other professors, too. They are on their own now.
Sink or swim, kids. Sink or swim.
*It was hard to come up with a title for this post. I originally called it "Stalking Students" because that's what I feel like I'm doing, but that's awful and I didn't want to seem to make light of dangerous situations.
I don't mean all of my students, obviously, but I do mean a giant chunk of them - larger than any semester I've ever seen before. For instance, eleven students out of twenty-two in one class didn't turn in a primary source analysis. That's 50%! That is shocking! ELEVEN.
(Just saying "eleven" makes me laugh and reminds me of this wonderful skit.)
You're welcome.
This is the same syllabus I've used for two other semesters with the same assignment instructions, so I'm 99% sure there isn't a problem with the clarity of my instructions, given that this has never happened before. Four of those eleven students who did submit the essay wrote it about the wrong primary source, just completely and entirely used the wrong source. Two of those students used sources from the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. The class is a modern U.S. history class. I just. I can't.
Today alone I asked two students why they weren't taking notes and didn't even have a notebook out. I told three students not to put their heads down on the desk because it was class time, not nap time. I emailed a student to find out when or if she was planning on returning to class because she emailed me a week ago to tell me her grandfather was on his deathbed and she wouldn't be in class Friday and wondered if she could take the quiz Monday instead. I hadn't heard from her since, so I emailed her to make sure she was ok. She's fine, according to her email, just had a cold and so she hasn't come to class. No mention of her sick grandfather, who happens to be sick right before the second test of the semester. Did I mention her grandmother passed away last month, right before the first test of the semester? I also emailed two students whose group project is two days overdue.
I had a group discussion of FDR's Four Freedoms and Charles Wesley's response planned. I broke them into groups, told them to read the Wesley source, which was only 3/4 page long. And then I watched them. I watched them read the source and then sit there. Silent. For minutes and minutes and minutes after every group member was finished reading. This is week ten in the semester and the class is very used to group work and discussing and they generally do a good job of it. Today they were silent and I was fed up. After ten minutes of silence, I actually said, "Did you forget that you are meant to discuss the two sources with your group?" I gave good instructions about what to discuss; I'm just not sharing them here for the sake of brevity in an already long post. Some of the good students actually chuckled, like I'm hilarious, but they were silent, too. What the frick? After my sarcasm, they did discuss them together and I went around to each group and everything was fine, as was the eventual discussion with the whole class - better than fine, good actually, but the damage was done.
I came to the realization, as I sat there watching them not discussing the sources, that I'm putting too much effort into this. I'm enabling them even though that was not my intention and even though I'm trying to teach them responsibility. I'm not their mother. Why am I doing all of this? If they don't care AT ALL, why do I?
It's just...I hate to see students failing. I hate to see them slipping through the cracks, so I try to follow up with them when I see it happening, but now I am that professor who harps on her students to put their phones away (every freaking class with one student in particular), take notes, wake up, turn their assignments in, nag, nag, nag. I don't want to be that professor. I don't like that professor. No one likes that professor.
I can feel the students who do their work getting frustrated. They roll their eyes at students who claim they had no idea a quiz was today or their paper had to be uploaded to turnitin.com. They are fed up with those students and so am I.
Weeks ago, I warned that the reminders would end and that they were on their own and yet I've found myself slipping back into the same habit because so many of them are not doing the work or paying attention to the syllabus. My nagging ends today. I am burnt out. I have no more to give. I can't help students who don't help themselves and so I am done. I have done all that I can. I have done far more than some of the FT professors in my department would do and I am just an adjunct. So, I'm calling it. I'm done.
I'm choosing to focus on the students who do their work, who come to class, who make an effort. There will be no more tracking students down about their assignments. No more nagging. No more lectures about how to act as a college student. They've heard it from me at least twice before and I know they've heard it from other professors, too. They are on their own now.
Sink or swim, kids. Sink or swim.
*It was hard to come up with a title for this post. I originally called it "Stalking Students" because that's what I feel like I'm doing, but that's awful and I didn't want to seem to make light of dangerous situations.
October 18, 2013
Routines and Ruts
You know the kind of semester where you feel like you are constantly getting your ass kicked? The semester that is simultaneously flying by and the longest semester of your life?
That's my semester. I've had bad semesters before, but this one, well, it takes the cake.
I was supposed to finish my dissertation this semester. It's mid-October and I can't remember the last time I actually had a moment or took a moment to even open up a chapter file.
I can't get it together. I can't keep up with the work. This was supposed to be an easy semester. Two sections of the same class that I've taught before and don't really need to prep much. Except there is a lot of prep because the chair doesn't want us to lecture much and wants us to design all these fantastic lesson plans to really reach students on multiple levels that lectures just can't reach. I didn't lecture much to begin with because I prefer activities and discussions and blah, blah, blah, but when your students don't read, it's really hard to get any sort of discussion going because they don't have the basic knowledge required to participate in that discussion. When they don't read, it's really hard to have a successful activity of any sort because, for instance, they can't defend a side in a mock Scopes trial when they don't know who Scopes was and they can't lobby President Wilson for or against the Espionage Act when they don't know what the Espionage Act is or who Wilson is or that there was a giant freaking war of epic proportions taking place.
I can't get into a routine and I need one. It's mid-October and I am stuck in a rut of just barely getting grading finished in time or just barely writing that exam before class or just barely prepping before class or whatever. I am losing my mind.
I need a routine. I like a routine. I don't know how I lost my routine, but I did and I can't seem to get back to it. I miss my routine! I miss having free time. I miss reading blogs to relax or commiserate or just catch up with people that I've met along the way in a million different writing groups. I miss writing groups! I miss College Misery and Jane B and Historiann and Amstr and Bardiac and Notorious PhD and everyone else whose name I didn't mention because it's 12:30 in the morning and I still have 20 test essays left to grade and my brain is fried. FRIED.
Here's my promise to myself: tonight I finish those tests. Tomorrow I grade their multiple-choice (hurrah!) quizzes and fill out the evaluations for the football players and finish grading their blog posts, which I'm actually on top of, surprisingly. Then I get to take a nap and, when I'm all refreshed from a delightful nap cuddled up with Dewey, I'm going to sit down and work out a weekly schedule (including time for yoga and all the annoying little things that crop up and suck up so much time - I'm no fool). After that, I get wine. Lots of wine. And I get to catch up on some blogs. And I get to go to sleep as early as I want. I'd put my money on 8:30, if anyone was taking bets.
I will have my routine and I will stick to it or else this vein is really going to explode and I don't have health insurance (or Medicaid yet), so that would be a problem.
Ok. Back to grading. *sob*
That's my semester. I've had bad semesters before, but this one, well, it takes the cake.
I was supposed to finish my dissertation this semester. It's mid-October and I can't remember the last time I actually had a moment or took a moment to even open up a chapter file.
I can't get it together. I can't keep up with the work. This was supposed to be an easy semester. Two sections of the same class that I've taught before and don't really need to prep much. Except there is a lot of prep because the chair doesn't want us to lecture much and wants us to design all these fantastic lesson plans to really reach students on multiple levels that lectures just can't reach. I didn't lecture much to begin with because I prefer activities and discussions and blah, blah, blah, but when your students don't read, it's really hard to get any sort of discussion going because they don't have the basic knowledge required to participate in that discussion. When they don't read, it's really hard to have a successful activity of any sort because, for instance, they can't defend a side in a mock Scopes trial when they don't know who Scopes was and they can't lobby President Wilson for or against the Espionage Act when they don't know what the Espionage Act is or who Wilson is or that there was a giant freaking war of epic proportions taking place.
I can't get into a routine and I need one. It's mid-October and I am stuck in a rut of just barely getting grading finished in time or just barely writing that exam before class or just barely prepping before class or whatever. I am losing my mind.
I need a routine. I like a routine. I don't know how I lost my routine, but I did and I can't seem to get back to it. I miss my routine! I miss having free time. I miss reading blogs to relax or commiserate or just catch up with people that I've met along the way in a million different writing groups. I miss writing groups! I miss College Misery and Jane B and Historiann and Amstr and Bardiac and Notorious PhD and everyone else whose name I didn't mention because it's 12:30 in the morning and I still have 20 test essays left to grade and my brain is fried. FRIED.
Here's my promise to myself: tonight I finish those tests. Tomorrow I grade their multiple-choice (hurrah!) quizzes and fill out the evaluations for the football players and finish grading their blog posts, which I'm actually on top of, surprisingly. Then I get to take a nap and, when I'm all refreshed from a delightful nap cuddled up with Dewey, I'm going to sit down and work out a weekly schedule (including time for yoga and all the annoying little things that crop up and suck up so much time - I'm no fool). After that, I get wine. Lots of wine. And I get to catch up on some blogs. And I get to go to sleep as early as I want. I'd put my money on 8:30, if anyone was taking bets.
I will have my routine and I will stick to it or else this vein is really going to explode and I don't have health insurance (or Medicaid yet), so that would be a problem.
Ok. Back to grading. *sob*
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.
September 19, 2013
Will this be me?
There is a tremendous sense of outrage over the tragic death of Margaret Mary Vojtko. Perhaps it was her life, or at the least the last few years of it, that was more tragic than her death. I don't know.
If you haven't read the article already, you should. Vojtko's death, in the most appalling way possible, highlights the effects of university administrators' willful disregard for the human beings they employ at pay levels per class that sometimes are less than or equal to what a work-study student can earn in a semester. Trying to earn a living as an adjunct is precarious, at best. Trying to earn a living as an adjunct in a country without universal health care is, obviously, worse. When you add to that an attempt at providing health care for everyone, but that attempt backfires as administrators prove they lack any milk of human kindness and cut adjuncts' class loads to avoid providing health care for those of us in the trenches, doing the majority of the teaching, teaching the classes full time faculty don't want, in the time frames they don't want, what you have is not a recipe for disaster. It is a guarantee of disaster.
The refusal of administrators to pay a living wage, to provide health insurance, to treat adjuncts as human beings deserve to be treated, will have lasting repercussions. I could go on and on about the unfairness of the situation to the students. Hell, I have. But you know what? There's been enough talk about the students. I don't care about students right now. For once, it's not about them. It's about me. It's about me and all the other adjuncts who, despite working tirelessly for wages that can do nothing but trap us into a cycle of what is basically mental torture when your insufficient income is unreliable, sporadic, and likely to change with the briefest of notice. It's about the desperation created by a system that will kick you out of the door after years of abuse and not even give thought to the destruction of your life and all that you have worked for, a destruction that they have helped cause. It's about the hope that this will end, that Vojtko's treatment - that the fact that she worked for a Catholic university for 25 years and yet was buried in a cardboard casket - will help bring an end to such a system.
Because you know what? Change the religious affiliation of the school and that could easily be me in the cardboard casket in forty years.
Because you know what? Change the religious affiliation of the school and that could easily be me in the cardboard casket in forty years.
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