It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
This was my second year on the academic job market, the first year post Ph.D. Back in September, the MLA Job Information List confirmed my worst fears about the serious lack of tenure-track jobs for 2011-2012. There’s nothing new about the imbalance between available tenure-track jobs in the humanities and the large numbers of highly qualified candidates who want them, but the last two years have been appallingly bleak.
It is no longer possible to ignore the correlation between an increasing reliance on contingent faculty and the decreasing number of secure jobs that pay a living wage.
As a graduate student, I could accept the indignities of contingency because I was "still in school.” I relied on my family for financial support. Without it, I could not have finished graduate school, because I would not have been able to support myself on my TA – and later adjunct – salary. I am grateful for their support, but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of my family to subsidize the education of my students.
As a graduate student, I could accept the indignities of contingency because I was "still in school.” I relied on my family for financial support. Without it, I could not have finished graduate school, because I would not have been able to support myself on my TA – and later adjunct – salary. I am grateful for their support, but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of my family to subsidize the education of my students.
When the opportunity presented itself, I quit. I may or may not pursue a third attempt at the tenure-track job market this coming fall. I may or may not continue to pursue my research interests as an independent scholar. I may or may not like my new job, which starts at the end of this month, just as spring semester is starting.
But I will never, ever work as an adjunct again.
This blog will explore my choice and its consequences.
I will watch with interest to hear what you have to say....
ReplyDeleteAnthea
Thanks for stopping by! The posts may come a bit slowly at first. The new job doesn't start until the end of next week, and I'm feeling the need to just clear my head between now and then, a process which may or may not make its way here (and I'm still figuring out the technology, too!).
ReplyDeleteGood luck to you! Being an adjunct is a thankless job; I am glad you quit. Hope you're able to find a non-academic job you'll love--even if it takes a while. Looking forward to hearing more about your journey away from the ivory tower in the future.
ReplyDeleteEW
I was searching for blogs about what I've been going through. I, too, have a PhD, and I ended up going back to being a paralegal, the job I had before grad school. I wrote about it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://tkristen.tumblr.com/post/12753326209/9-to-5-and-back-again-by-trailer-parker-phd
Oh, if I could go back to 2003, I would sooooo make other choices.
Thanks for sharing your story and welcome to the blog! All we can do is keep talking and hope that people who are today where we were a decade ago will listen and choose more wisely. While I think things have gotten considerably worse in academic job land in the last few years, it seems departments and grad programs have been actively hiding the truth from prospective and current grad students. And why wouldn't they? Those departments couldn't function without the willing participation of the majority of their instructors who will NEVER get "real" jobs no matter how good they are as teachers and scholars nor how hard they work. People with stories like ours were invisible when we were just starting out, but blogging gives us a voice, an alternative to what people hear from advisers, grad studies directors, and the few who have "made it" onto the tenure track. Keep talking! I do believe there are some out there who are listening ...
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I'm continuing to write about it so I can help spread the word. I guess I could have found out the truth if I'd really researched the profession, but outsiders don't get insider information very easily. The whole experience has left me angry and heartbroken, and no job is worth that.
ReplyDeleteThis experience is making me learn to base my self-esteem on something besides intelligence, and I feel more like a whole person since I'm not consumed by theory and research.
For a while I was an academic advisor in an English Department, and I left in part because I couldn't tell students that graduate school was a good idea. I didn't want to perpetuate the problem, but really, that was what I was "supposed" to do - recruit. Ugh.
I think you could had been completely honest and still have students signing up. Sad, but true!
DeleteI'm another ex-academic - though I was fortunate enough to realize how bleak things were very early on (just a few months into my first year; I ended up leaving a few months after that). Anyhow, I've been writing a series of posts on grad school, grad school culture, and my experience, etc. The series uses the story of a former professional baseball player who struggled in the minors the way that so many grad students struggle in grad school and in post-docs trying to make it to the big leagues of tenure.
DeleteIn this 4th installment, I specifically talk about how grad students - ppl who tend to pride themselves on their keen critical thinking and research skills - could so frequently fail to critically think and do research about going to grad school: http://deathbytrolley.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-grad-school-gospels-part-4-grad-school-goggles-and-cult/
I'll have to go check out your posts, but I actually don't find the comparison between academics and either aspiring sports stars or artists especially persuasive. I've blogged about the comparison between careers in academe and careers in the arts here
Deleteand I think a lot of that argument holds true for comparisons to sports careers, too.
I am also experiencing a great deal of frustration working as an adjunct physics professor. Full time instructors get paid more per hour, and they get paid at that higher rate to make and grade exams during the hours they are scheduled to work.
ReplyDeleteAs an adjunct, I am only paid for time spent in the classroom; and each time I give an exam, I put in anywhere from eight to ten hours in writing and grading it outside of class. I enjoy teaching, but I also deeply resent getting cheated out of thousands of dollars each semester.
Any extra time I spend in preparation for class or answering student questions via e-mail, the school does not pay me for, though this may consume many hours each week.
How can administration and politicians regard this as okay?
How can they expect that this treatment will not damage adjunct morale?
I am glad you are writing about the plight of adjuncts, and I wish you well in your post-adjunct career.
Getting paid by the number of hours you spend in class is pretty terrible. I was paid per course I taught, but the number of hours I was supposed to devote to each course didn't always add up fairly. For each course, I was supposed to spend 3 hours each week in class and 7 on prep and grading. Of course, in reality, while the amount of time you spend in class doesn't change, the amount of time you spend on prep and grading certainly does -- if for example, you're teaching a course you've never taught before or multiple courses rather than multiple sections of a single course. Even paid by the course, though, the salary was still terrible. And it didn't matter whether I was a "good" teacher or just showed up and went through the motions. Nothing I could do would lead to more job security, better pay, or a promotion to the tenure track.
ReplyDeleteYou ask how administrators and politicians can regard this as OK. I'd say for politicians, a lot of them are just oblivious. They're not paying attention, as long as their voters aren't asked to pay more in taxes. Politicians, especially on the right, don't look too kindly on teachers at any level though. They think we're all overpaid already because we have the summers off. Ha!!! If they only knew.
For the administrators, well, they are paying themselves first, thinking about the university's bottom line second, and not giving a damn about adjunct morale at all. Why? Because they can get away with it. As long as there are people willing to work on the terms allotted to adjuncts, nothing is going to change. That's why I walked away and why I tell everyone I can -- even if they love teaching and research -- to get out and do something else.
I'm sure there's work in the private sector you can do as a physicist, isn't there? If you want to quit adjuncting, that is. Private companies, as well as the government, hire scientists for research and development. Good luck!
Wow, I really feel bad about how I was in my gen ed classes. Didn't show up half the time, didn't read or write anything I didn't absolutely have to, and then go beg and plead to get points to get up to an A.
DeleteAnd overall I'm a good student. I just did not see the importance of those gen ed classes. I feel so guilty now.
I am an adjunct in the same position as you are. I am about to quit also.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteGood luck to you! If you read some of the more recent entries on the blog, you will see that it's been a long journey since I wrote this first post almost two years ago. I'm not working as a secretary anymore, and I'm a lot happier with both work and life than I would have been had I stayed on in adjunctville. Just think -- if I'd stuck around in academe, I'd be gearing up for yet another round of freshman comp final papers. Gaaahh! What a terrible thought. So many more interesting things have happened since I left, even throughout the year and a half I worked as a secretary.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes with making the break! It's the hardest part but very much worth it.
I'm in the same situation, too. Leaving. Thank you for this blog. It's always helpful to hear about someone with a similar situation who's been able to turn it all around. Hopeful.
DeleteI quit after 15 years of being an adjunct or occasionally a full time temp. I am a grounds keeper now. I only make about $1000 a month, but if you average my pay as an adjunct over a year, the pay is pretty similar. I homeschool my son, so I still teach. I encourage other adjuncts to find new careers and use their education and intelligence to get out of our failing education system.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that fixing our education system from the inside was the way to go, but as an adjunct, really, the greatest power you have is to leave. When enough of us leave, those who have power and money within the system will have to figure out how to get all those classes taught. I'm not convinced they really care, though ...
DeleteCongrats on finally making the jump!
This is a very helpful post. I want nothing more to find a job outside academia. Besides, I will be blunt honest, I have come to hate teaching. Hate teaching pointless MLA format and reading shitty developmental level papers. Plus, too many students are entitled or getting arrested, and I am supposed to make them care about a thesis statement? Some of these students cannot even stay out of prison. Teaching composition is useless. I would get more pleasue out of being a dental assistant (which I plan on going back to school for). Wish me luck!!!
ReplyDeleteGood luck!!!
DeleteThesis statements and students with fucked-up attitudes be damned, but you know what I've found interesting lately? Some of the things I used to teach have turned out to be rather useful. One of the things I do at my new job (the post-secretary one I started about 6 months ago) is analyze public debate over certain policy issues. When my comp students were figuring out research paper topics, I used to make them do this exercise where they identified and categorized different arguments about their topics that various stakeholders were making. I'd get them to lay this all out in a neat little one-page chart. The idea was to get them to streamline their own thinking and write a more focused paper. They hated this exercise -- just hated it like having their teeth pulled! But just the other week here a my new job, some of the other analysts and I were scoping out a new research project. We were trying to get our heads around the public policy debate, what the issues and positions were, where we could make a unique contribution, blah blah blah etc. So, I decided to make a chart like I used to torture my comp students into doing. And my colleagues loved it! They said it was really helpful in understanding how the different arguments being made related to each other. Talk about vindication. This has happened before with other things, too ...
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that one of my biggest problems with academe continues to be the disconnection from "real world" activities. Students don't see the connection between what they do in a comp class and how that might connect to a "real" job they might do after they graduate. Administrators and professors don't see it either, nor do adjuncts and grad students who may have never done any other type of work. That disconnection makes it a lot easier to devalue the work adjuncts do. It makes it a lot easier to pay them shit and treat them like shit.
I don't think all academic work has to have nonacademic, "real world" value, but the fact that some of it does and is never acknowledged as such is a big problem.
But, yeah, I can for sure see how you might get more pleasure out of being a dental assistant! A great many people would get a great deal more satisfaction from having a nice smile than from writing a good thesis statement.