(Marina Blitschteyn, Elliott Freeman, Katharine Johnsen, Rachel Kennedy, Christine Utz) Emerging writers striving to master craft at the same time they are teaching it have some serious questions: How do emerging writers transition into adjunct positions after graduation? What about those who don’t want the hassle of hustling? This group of emerging writers, recent graduates, teaching assistants, and adjuncts will discuss strategies for maintaining an active writing life while managing the stressful juggle of jobs, both adjunct and otherwise, following graduate school.

Published Date: January 6, 2016

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Welcome to the A W P podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2015 A W P conference in Minneapolis. The recording features Marina Blitzstein, Elliot Freeman, Catherine Johnson, Rachel Kennedy, and Christine tz. You will now hear Rachel Kennedy provide introductions.

Speaker 2 (00:33):

Thank you very much. My name is Rachel Kennedy and our panel is the Pedagogical Push Post-Graduation Transition to Being An Adjunct. In June of 2014, Guernica published an essay titled The Teaching Class written by Rachel Reer. In it, she discusses how the working conditions and struggles of adjuncts is not only an administrative or faculty issue, but also a student and consumer issue. Toward the end of the essay, she acknowledges her pedantry by stating throughout this piece I I've been taking the liberty of using adjunct as a job title and even as a verb, the term actually means a thing added to something else as a supplementary rather than an essential part. If teaching is a supplementary rather than an essential part of college, why go adjuncts continue to go? For many reasons and for myself and the adjuncts that I know, none of the reasons or perhaps motivations include financial stability, job security, or fair contracts.

Speaker 2 (01:50):

But with the ever increasing reliance, around 70% on adjuncts with advanced degrees to supplement classroom space for low wages, many of whom teach several classes at multiple locations to make ends meet this topic and those who are affected need a nuanced and robust dialogue. On March 25th, 2015, the New Yorker published an article titled, oh Adjunct, my Adjunct written by Carmen Maria Machado. In it, Machado Recounts being completely unaware that her most valuable undergraduate professor was an adjunct, and as she journeys through an M F A program, with his encouragement, she slowly begins to understand and analyze through a range of emotions, many issues with adjuncting, but predominantly the silence of it and her lack of awareness while she was his student. Towards the end, she states A key lesson in higher education is that few things matter more than good questions for starters, as emerging writers and adjuncts, how do we balance our teaching obligations with our academic and creative aspirations? For those of us who teach as adjuncts or tass during graduate school, how do we work to master craft while striving to teach it at the same time? How does the experience of teaching during graduate school influence the decision to adjunct or not adjunct following graduation? Is the current adjunct situation a factor in that decision? These are some of the issues that we seek to discuss.

Speaker 2 (03:39):

So the format of this panel will be, I'm going to introduce the panelists beside me in alphabetical order and lastly myself, and then they will speak very briefly to you about their experience and we're going to engage in some interpanel conversation and then we're going to open it up for everyone else to join in and ask some questions. So over here to my right is Marina Glitching. She's the author of the Poetry Chapbook Russian for Lovers and the newly released Chapbook, nothing Personal, which is on sale at the book fair at Bella Donna Table. She studied English at SUNY Buffalo and earned her M F A in creative writing from Columbia University where she worked as a writing instructor and consultant. She's currently an adjunct professor in New York and she curates the La Peru Performance Series. To my far left is Elliot Freeman, who studied English at the University of Southern Mississippi and earned his M F A in creative writing from Adelphi University where he worked as an adjunct professor in creative writing as well as a tutor.

Speaker 2 (04:51):

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in product Black and Gold Review, prick of the Spindle and Goblin Fruit among others. He currently works as a writing specialist and assistant professor at Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke, Virginia, as well as a marketing specialist for DePaul Community Resources. To my immediate right is Catherine Johnson. She's an Atlanta-based poet. Her work has appeared in Tupelo quarterly Mid-American Review, ninth Letter and Nashville Review among others. She's the recipient of a Dorothy Sergeant Rosenberg prize and has received scholarships to attend Sewanee Writers Conference. She studied French and playwriting at Emory University and earned her M F A in creative writing from University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she received the Bernice Kurt Fellowship and taught creative writing classes. And to my immediate left is Christine Utz, who studied English and sociology at the University of North Florida and earned an M F A in fiction from a Delphi University. She's currently pursuing a second M F A at the Iowa Writers Workshop and works as a teaching assistant at a private school for children. Her work has appeared in Mary a Journal of New Writing, joy Land Black and Gold Review, gloom, cupboard fiction Fix and Seller Door anthology among others. She also co-authored a book titled Occupying Wall Street, the Inside Story of an Action that Changed America. It was published in 2012.

Speaker 2 (06:31):

As for me, I earned my M F A in creative writing from Adelphi University and had the opportunity to teach creative writing as an adjunct while completing my degree. Following graduation, I continued to adjunct for a year and a half teaching composition writing. After the fall of 2014, I decided to walk away from adjuncting. I organized this panel out of a need to come together and share ideas to let our voices and our frustrations and questions be articulated. Because this topic is relevant, important, and though we each have different experiences and perspectives, we also recognize the problems from our various vantage points. First up to speak is Marina Glitching.

Speaker 3 (07:21):

Hi. So before I start real quick, I just want to get a show of hands for the audience who is going to be adjuncting or is currently adjuncting or interested in adjuncting. Okay, fair enough. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about my own background, where I'm coming from in terms of teaching experience, and there's obviously a lot to talk about for me because I'm currently adjuncting, so it's a really raw emotional thing for me right now just to go public with this. Also worth noting is that it's actually a little bit fraught because I'm still adjuncting, so there's always a little hint of danger. The fact that I'm expressing my experiences right now. I was teaching before grad school before getting my M F A. I taught a little bit of high school in the Bronx. I was an English ta and during grad school I was getting my M F A at Columbia and I got the coveted U W P fellowship that was much needed.

Speaker 3 (08:18):

So I got to teach Columbia undergraduate writing for two years and worked there as a consultant. So then once I graduated, really adjuncting was one of the few things I was qualified for and had competitive experience doing, so I just fell right into it. There was an urgent call at one of the institutions I currently work for and I answered that call and I think having Columbia teaching experience helped me land that position. So that was over three years ago and I'm still doing it and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on this and I guess if you're currently doing it or considering doing it, there are a couple of things that I honestly actually appreciate about adjuncting. The hours for the most part can be flexible and it's not like a nine to five. Also, I don't feel like I have to sell my soul doing copywriting for big pharma.

Speaker 3 (09:15):

There's something in me that is preventing me from taking that route. So adjuncting started out as a temporary solution for me and now it's just kind of like the thing that I'm doing. Moreover, I pretty much have autonomy in the classroom including pedagogical autonomy so I can sort of teach the text that I like and have the conversations that I want to have with my students. The experience I found is actually pretty intimate. The relationship is me and my students and very rarely do I talk to a supervisor ever, which is incidentally also one of the cons because I think I am pretty good at my job and I have student confirmation, but very few people know that, and actually it's taking an emotional toll on me that people don't know that I'm actually good at teaching. And that is conveyed to me because I've only at one of the institutions I work for am I being evaluated and my classes are being set in on once a year and that's actually impressive.

Speaker 3 (10:16):

I don't think adjuncts typically have supervisors sit in on their lessons. So I like to say of the worst, my experiences are among the best. I have a supervisor at one institution that actually cares, so that feels good. Moreover, obviously I'm not getting paid what I think I deserve. And actually just saying that I've never really said that out loud. I really value the institutions I work for. I love what I do, but it's taking its toll that I am not being paid what I should be. The other thing that's worth noting that I actually think a lot about is that a lot of what I suspect keeps the spindle spinning is this issue of morality, which is that I am morally, I feel morally obligated to do work that is outside of my pay grade. So theoretically, and I think this is with most adjuncting contracts, you only get paid per hour per lecture hour.

Speaker 3 (11:07):

So every time I'm standing in front of the students, that's the stuff I get paid for. What I don't get paid for is the answering emails, grading papers, which if you're teaching three to four courses a semester, that is od. So I have don't know, 80 to a hundred papers that I grade and comment on for free essentially. So that's just let that sit in because that's a lot of work. That's actually half the stuff I do answering emails and then all the letters of recommendation from students that I really value that I want to help them get into stuff. And that's again, stuff that is for free. I can't say come talk to me during my office hours because number one, I don't have an office. Number two, I would be doing it for free. So what I'm finding challenging is having that boundary between what I want to do for the students and what I ethically feel like I should not be doing because I feel complicit in the adjunct exploitation system.

Speaker 3 (12:08):

So I'm interested because of this question of morality. It seems like that's the same moral you should be a good teacher that haunts motherhood and nursing and generally female professions. So I'm interested, and I have not seen the stats on this, to what extent adjuncting is predominantly composed of women, so I would love to see those numbers because I suspect the majority of adjuncts are in fact women. So really quickly, just to touch base on a couple of things to finish up, I obviously don't have health insurance and that's one of the things that I want the most and I can't afford it, and I'm teaching on average three to four classes a semester. My schedule is typically made for me. I have to ask my students, they're like, miss, I'm in your class next semester, and I'm like, oh, cool, when am I teaching?

Speaker 3 (12:57):

Because they just sort of schedule it and then I have to redirect and figure out my semester every year is kind of tense because I don't know if I'm going to have a job. Typically, I sort of have that relationship with my institutions where I feel like I'm safe in having that job, but who knows, right? The contract is per semester. So there you go, and I mean, I guess I should just close on the fact that it's depressing every time I do my taxes to realize how much I'm making and how much I feel like I should be, this lifestyle is not sustainable for me, and I went into it temporarily and I'm still doing it, so God help me. I hope not to be doing it very soon, but again, what am I going to do? There are on these new lecture ships that universities are test driving, but I really think that's just a way of cutting back on tenure.

Speaker 3 (13:45):

So to what extent should I want one of those, I'm totally complicit in adjuncting. I don't know really who to blame. It's very difficult for me to talk about this without indicting higher education in general that I think is currently being run like Walmart, and I don't think that's ethically the responsibility of higher education, a place of learning, and if the stats are correct, this is increasingly the way of universities and colleges. So I'm really happy we're having this panel and I think we should be having it way more, and I look forward to the conversation that we're about to have. So thank you.

Speaker 4 (14:30):

Hello everyone. In case you've forgotten, my name is Elliot Freeman. I regret that name immensely, but my father gave it to me. Fun fact, I'm named exactly after him, so is my niece. One day after my niece was born, he was sitting outside and he just says It's good to finally have a namesake. And then I stared at him a long time and have never really forgiven him. This isn't about that though. This is about some of the realizations that I had as an adjunct and what they kind of guided me to in terms of my own career choices, and I'm going to start with the great big giant red disclaimer, that none of this is legal and or career advice. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear and that they should not mix this panel with alcohol. Basically, I had three major realizations during my time as an adjunct where and the Adelphi M F A program.

Speaker 4 (15:24):

I had the opportunity to teach creative writing on my own independently for three wonderful semesters with a set of really interesting students and also a few really interesting students, and we all know that those words mean different things. The first thing that I learned and that I think most adjuncts learn or have to learn is that I wasn't an imposter. I went into the classroom my very first day and I was petrified because I was certain they were going to call me out. They were going to look at me and just know, yeah, he's not supposed to be there. Where's the real professor? Get this guy out of there. What I learned from that was that I knew more than I suspected or possibly my students knew less than I had wanted, but either way, I didn't have to be afraid of being found out as an imposter.

Speaker 4 (16:13):

I was genuinely an expert in the material that I was going to be helping them to learn, and that was a tremendous confidence booster for me. The second realization that I had was that I loved teaching, and this was a particularly surprising realization for me because I am an extremely introverted person. I do not like talking to new people. I do not like talking to crowds. I do not like talking to sheep sometimes. I don't like talking to my friends, and as an introvert, I expected to be and absolutely was at first terrified that I was going to be up there in a classroom three times a week, 50 minutes each time having to fill silence with not just fill silence but fill silence with something meaningful. What I found out though was something that I learned a lot as a poet, which was a lesson in persona.

Speaker 4 (17:06):

I usually describe my teaching style as standup, which is that if I can get the students to laugh at me, not with me, but at me, I can usually get them to at least maybe pretend to listen. And that made some kind of meaningful difference. At least for me. I could realize that the person who I was when I was up there in front of those students didn't have to be a complete reflection of the person who I was every other day, every other moment of my life. But as part of that love of teaching, I also found that teaching was a full-time job even when it was part-time. And by that I mean I think most writers have about five to 10% of your brain's runtime. That's always running in the background thinking about how would I write this? Especially my poet friends who I see nodding.

Speaker 4 (17:50):

How would I write this situation? What would I say about how that person looks when they're walking? And I found the same thing was actually true of my teaching. I found myself spending another five to 10% of my brain in every waking moment thinking, how can I use this in my classroom? Which one of my students is going to engage with this idea? In particular, the last thing that I learned about being an adjunct was that I couldn't be an adjunct. I like to say that my highfalutin sort of reason for it is that as Marina very conscientiously brought up, there's this moral idea about the whole adjuncting system. And I didn't want to participate in a system that was broken. And I mean, I think you could charitably call it broken. I think you could more realistically call it exploitative, and that's a lie that doesn't hold water me a culpa because I do.

Speaker 4 (18:47):

I work at a college, I have an academic support role where I have academic rank and I have health insurance, and that makes me part of that system, and I'm still trying to reconcile that. But what I realized really was that I didn't have the fortitude that it took to do what I saw the great adjuncts around me doing. I saw people who were spending hours and hours of their life either in cramped closet, office spaces, hallways because they didn't have offices who were grading papers flying down the highways to get from one school to another and every single semester hustling to try and get three or four different schools to give them the classes they need to not be living in a cardboard box. And I didn't have the emotional fortitude to do that. What I do want to say though is what I found was that there are other roles that the M F A can play in terms of how you can live either inside of or out of the academy.

Speaker 4 (19:49):

Obviously I work as a writing consultant, so tutoring, but with the slightly more prestigious title in front of it. I also get to work with faculty on their writing. And anyone who's done that knows that it's amazing how much the faculty and the students are similar to one another. But I also got the opportunity to work in social media and in marketing for a social support agency. And I had originally resisted marketing as an alternative because I thought I was going to sell my soul to the pharmaceutical industry. And I actually tried to do that and they didn't want to buy my soul. My soul was defective. Yeah. But what I found was there are places that you can do marketing where you're really more interested in telling a story. So the social services departments are usually places that are working with young people in foster care and adoption individuals with developmental disabilities.

Speaker 4 (20:46):

And what they're looking for isn't their next campaign slogan. What they're looking for are compassionate people who know how to listen when other people are talking, who know how to find stories and who know how to share those stories with other people in a way that makes an emotional impact. So I offer that by way of just some small encouragement that there are possible avenues out there that exist beyond the adjuncting world. But as to the original question, which was balance balancing life as an adjunct or as anything that's not an adjunct in writing, I'm still working on that. So we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 5 (21:36):

Hi everybody. Thanks all for being here. I also want to thank Rachel for having us all on this panel and getting us together. I think this is an important conversation that we need to be able to have. I considered myself very fortunate to be able to teach as a teaching assistant in my M F A program for two years, and also very fortunate that I received a fellowship. So I got to write for my very first year and not have to teach. So I had an M F A experience that I could contrast from year to year. And I went to an M F A program wanting to have that teaching experience and wanting to teach afterwards and knowing if I could teach while I was a student, I could see if it was something I loved and something I wanted to do later. And was while I was in my program, I saw graduates adjuncting and graduates, not adjuncting.

Speaker 5 (22:36):

And I had friends who I have friends who were professors and seeing all of them balanced before I graduated helped me to see what I needed to do. And what I needed was to be a writer first and I needed to prioritize my poems. And the second reason that I decided not to adjunct was I didn't want to feel disposable. And I think Marina was mentioning something about adjuncting and not feeling like her worth is recognized, and I didn't want that. So went the root of taking a day job that I love that is flexible, that allows me to take two weeks off so I can hold myself up and write.

Speaker 5 (23:26):

And I greatly appreciate that, and I appreciate that at the end of the day, I'm not too tired to come home and write and I don't have to go home and grade papers. It made me nervous. I literally shook at the idea of the adjunct tussle, the anxiety of being beholden to student evaluations for a job that you don't know if it'll last another semester. The idea that any energy I have is being used commuting to various campuses, and I think job security and benefits are important, and I would like that. So Rachel asked us a couple of questions as we were sort of thinking about this panel and what we wanted to talk about. And one of the things she asked was, did your experience influence your decision not to teach afterwards? And it absolutely did. I knew that I wanted to teach. I knew that I still want to teach, but correct me if I'm wrong, but my assumption and what I've seen is that if you get stuck in the adjunct hamster wheel, it doesn't seem like you'll get a chance to get out.

Speaker 5 (24:45):

And it doesn't seem like if you take that route, you'll have a chance to be taken seriously one day as a candidate for a tenure track position. Even though those are drying up, there are still some out there and people do get them. And it seems like if you're willing to work as an adjunct, you're less likely to be considered for those positions because you will work the adjunct role. And that terrifies me. We were talking about if the situation, the adjunct situation, were better, would we want to pursue it or does the choice to not pursue the adjunct positions lie in the issues with adjuncting itself or does it lie in the attention we want to give our writing? And for me, it's a combination of both, but we're the situation to improve living wages, job security opportunities for professional development. I mean, I think that's worth considering.

Speaker 5 (25:53):

I think it's important, but for me it's important to prioritize the writing first. My day job is I work as a facilitator for a child with severe severe autism, and my day is filled with laughter and joy and has nothing to do with poetry, and it doesn't bother me at all because I know that as soon as I get home, as soon as I'm on my time, it's all fulfilling in that way. And I get to write freely. I had a conversation with a mentor's husband, and he said, as soon as you start writing poems about the kids, you've got to get out. And so far we're good.

Speaker 5 (26:49):

The other part of this panel was about managing the challenge of mastering the craft of writing while teaching it at the same time. And I'm very interested in that because I think we're all quite young in our writing careers and not too far removed from our own light bulb moments as students. And I think for me to recall what clicked, and also to remember when I didn't know any of the stuff that my students don't know or didn't know is wonderful. I haven't had so many semesters teaching where I can't believe that they don't know what a volta is in ANet. I remember what life was like before I got poetry, and I think that makes me a better teacher because I know how to get them to see it and what reading the right poem can do. I don't think that'll change, but I do think that we're lucky as young teachers to be able to recall that and use that to our advantage, especially when there are so few advantages to being a young teacher. So that's sort of my little shtick. So thanks.

Speaker 6 (28:21):

Hello. So I actually wanted to tell a story first and then I'll get more into my background because in thinking about this panel, I just kept getting anxious about going back into teaching. Actually, I got my first M F A at Adelphi, and then I taught for three years, and then I went back into, or actually I taught for four years, and then I went back into an M F A program. And so now I'm thinking about what do I do when I graduate? This one, it has me four more very anxious about this prospect of adjuncting again, and it reminded me of a story where I was teaching at St. John's University and I missed a train. And then the next train that was coming, everyone had to get off because there was some fire or something like that. So it was clear I was not going to make it to my class on time, which was all the way in Queens and took me an hour and a half to get to.

Speaker 6 (29:17):

And so I'm frantically calling the office and calling my director and calling all these people, nobody's answering their phone. And then finally my director emails me back and I say, I'm so sorry. I'm going to miss my class. I can't control this. It's the trains. I'm going to hop in a taxi. I'll be there in an hour. And I was going through all this trouble to get there and she says, oh, don't worry about it. And in my mind, I mean on the one hand, yeah, it's understandable, trains are late. Things happen in New York City. But on the other hand, it was almost like I could have not shown up at all and not told anybody, and nobody would've noticed. And that to me is a little scary being an adjunct. So that's kind of what the direction I'm going to head. As I said, I got my first M F A from Adelphi, and actually a few of my classmates are here and my professors are here, and we were able to teach in that program.

Speaker 6 (30:09):

So I taught for two semesters. I taught creative writing, intro to creative writing, and that's really where I discovered that I loved it. And being up there in front of the students satisfied this very selfish need to have all eyes on you and have people listen to you. But also it was very rewarding in those quiet moments, especially with my students where they grasped a concept or they wrestled with something and I saw them have their own light bulb moments. And so that really told me that it was something I wanted to do. It was something I was fairly good at. And so I pursued it after I graduated and I was teaching at three universities. So I was at St. John's University, I was at Adelphi University, and I was teaching at Kingsborough Community College for a little while. And just geographically, for those of you who aren't aware, St.

Speaker 6 (30:57):

John's is in Queens, Adelphi is in Long Island, and Kingsboro is way, way out in Brooklyn. And I was living in Brooklyn, so you can imagine the crazy commuting. On average, I would go to at least two schools a day and sometimes all three, and that meant a lot of time spent on the train, the subway, the long end railroad. I took naps on all of them, which you kind of get over the grossness of leaning against the subway pole. And I graded papers on the subway. I did whatever I could to fill in that time. That time was so valuable. I wrote on the subway, I wrote in my phone, I did whatever I could talking about balancing writing and teaching. And then after even just the first year, I realized I was getting really burnt out. So I actually applied for another job thinking I could step away from the teaching a little bit.

Speaker 6 (31:45):

So I worked as a personal assistant to this art attorney. He was formerly the vice president and Chief counsel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. So it was really awesome to work for him, but also took time away from writing, and it actually didn't give me any more free time, although I got paid under the table. So that was nice. I didn't have to pay taxes, but I still didn't get insurance from that either. Talking about the ways that we kind of handle the lack of benefits. But then, so after teaching for three years in New York, I moved to the Midwest and decided to apply for another M F A, the University of Iowa. And I got in, and now I'm breathing this sigh of relief that I have time again to write, and I'm only teaching one class a semester, and it's gen ed lit, and it's this kind of reprieve from what I was doing.

Speaker 6 (32:38):

But then when I think about what I want to do afterwards, I absolutely still want to teach. And so it's making me anxious to think, am I going to really jump back into the adjunct game? So that leads me up to some of the scary things that I see happening at my university that I want to mention. So I'm a ta, but I'm at a big state university, unlike some of the other ones I was teaching at before, maybe Kingsborough accepted. And what I see is that the majority of intro level gen ed classes are taught by TAs, and we are technically paid pretty well for the big 10 schools, but it's still not enough to live on. We do get benefits as students, which is nice, but they've had to fight. The graduate studenting unit has had to fight really, really hard for that.

Speaker 6 (33:31):

So I hope we'll talk a little bit about adjuncts trying to unionize and that kind of stuff. But then also what I've noticed is this pressure on the TAs where we also feel like we don't have much control. For example, in my school, we're technically supposed to give 40% Cs in our classes. They tell us that. And I hate that kind of big brother voice in my head. You're going to lose your job if you don't give 15 C's in your class. So stuff like that I'm experiencing, I'm experiencing my students wondering why they have all these young grad students teaching them. And it's this interesting world that I think adjuncting overlaps with the graduate student teaching as well. So finally, I'm just going to wrap up here with expressing my future fears about the job market and the walmartization that's happening at the university level.

Speaker 6 (34:28):

And is there a way we can push back against that and change that? And actually, I talk to my students openly about my position and let them know that I don't get paid very much and my hours, my time in the classroom is what I get paid for my office hours, which are two hours a week I get paid for. But everything else I don't. And I let them know that it's been a struggle in the hopes that they're going to push back as well and say, you're having these students, these grad students teach our classes, but why aren't you giving them the resources? I mean, they're paying good money for us to be up there basically. Okay, so I will end with that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (35:16):

Alright, so there's a couple of questions that I'd like to start with my panelists. And I was debating which one to do, and I think I will start with this one since Christine just brought it up. So I'd like to start by talking about the silences of adjuncting. I've read a few articles and off the top of my head, I don't remember which magazines and journals they were in, but I've read a few articles recently about adjuncts who have spoken to their students about the issues and the problems with adjuncting because students should know why can't we meet in an office? Why doesn't this professor have an office? Why we have to meet in the cafeteria or the lounge or where is the student's money going or the parent's money going? And it's not in an angry type of way, it's just in an informative type of way, adjuncts talking to their students. But when the adjunct's supervisor found out they were reprimanded. So I guess what I want to ask my panelists, since I think Marina brought it up and Christine brought it up, should adjuncts discuss adjuncting, discuss their jobs, discuss the situation openly with their students? Why should students be aware of all of this?

Speaker 3 (36:40):

Yes, yes, and yes. I do also just talk to them openly on the first day. So I do a little spiel, what my background is in teaching, et cetera, and then I'm like, I'm an adjunct. For those who don't know, you should Google it. There's a crisis going on in higher education right now. Literally, that's my line part of the benefit. And again, I'm aware that this is being recorded, so I'm a little, it's anxiety inducing just saying this, but I am aware that there could be some repercussions for this practice. But I think that's one of the best ways to cause a minor revolution. Interestingly, in one of my classes this past semester, one of my students was like, oh, adjuncting interesting was going to be a journalist. And she wanted to write about it, and she wanted to interview me about it. And I'm like, oh, Jesus.

Speaker 3 (37:36):

I was terrified that she was going to go to administration and be like, my instructor is an adjunct. Why isn't she blah, blah, blah? I could not openly talk to her. I could not answer her questions. I referred her to a colleague that used to adjunct but doesn't anymore. So hopefully it's not scary for him to answer candidly, but I do it. And at this point I'm, I'm waiting for the revolution. I have to imagine that if the students will care, they'll tell their parents because they're shelling out hundreds and thousands of dollars for their education. I don't think the parents know the extent to which there is a crisis happening. So I'm hoping that there will be more articles published in the New Yorker, but specifically geared to the parents who are co-signing all of these loans and imagining that their children are getting the best education they can, and they are because we're all great at what we do, but how good we could be if we had office hours, if we were part of the committees that formed lesson plans and formed a really cohesive education and felt like we were a part of the university.

Speaker 3 (38:48):

So I think that I am not being silent about it anymore, and I honestly am waiting for the day that I'm out of the adjuncting game and I'm just going to be knocking on doors of Huffington Post, Washington Post the nation. I just want this to be as loud as it can.

Speaker 6 (39:09):

I think I first started raising it with my students in connection to some of the stuff with Occupy Wall Street, which I was sort of involved with, not to the extent that some people were, but I was interested in and was kind of studying as it was happening in New York. And I was talking to my students about the very scary job market that they were entering, and I was sort of trying to sympathize with them and say, well, look at me. I'm working as an adjunct and my contracts are semester to semester. I don't get paid enough at each university. I have to work at three, and I don't get health benefits. I have to pay for my, I was talking to them about all of that and how it was difficult. And some of them were just like, well, why don't you get another job?

Speaker 6 (39:55):

And that's a great question, why didn't I get another job? But to me, I think, and a lot of us have spoken to this, I mean, it's not about the money. I mean, it is, I need to survive, but that's not really why I'm doing it. But at the same time, I think that makes us vulnerable because then it says simply, I'm willing to put up with this because I love doing this so much. I think that's dangerous. And I think that's where we do need to see more pushback and saying, well, no, I won't accept this, but it's hard. I mean, how do you do that when you feel powerless, when you feel like you could lose your job for speaking out? And maybe it is do it after the fact when you're no longer adjuncting. But I don't know. I mean, I feel comfortable talking to my students about it.

Speaker 6 (40:41):

I feel comfortable being honest with them. I don't feel like it's going to come back to bite me in the rear end, but I also haven't been reprimanded for it yet. So I don't know. I think I'm going to continue to talk about it with them as an issue at the university level. It's starting, I think, to become more of a conversation among faculty groups. I'm speaking now from being a ta, and we had meetings about connecting with the graduate student union about opting to get the university to waive all fees so we don't have to pay fees because working for you the university. And so there is some pushback I see happening, but it's been very slow and it certainly isn't happening universally. There's no universal adjunct union unionization that's happening.

Speaker 4 (41:38):

And I just wanted to throw in that I guess the beauty of being no longer an adjunct is that even if I'm not an adjunct, I can now be an adjunct ally. So when I work a lot with my students, often I'll hear them say, disparagingly, oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about. She's an adjunct. So their understanding of adjunct versus full-time faculty is one of quality versus well just of quality. And I usually try and take it as a teachable moment to let them know what kind of situations adjunct professors are putting themselves through. And almost universally when I actually tell them and explain to them, so this is what an adjunct professor is expected to do. He or she is probably working at three or four different schools. They don't know whether or not they're going to be able to afford the place that they rent from semester to semester. And it really helps them put it into perspective because a lot of the times they're just looking for another reason to complain about them. And the adjunct thing is an easy one because they see that otherness and some of them latch onto it even without knowing or really understanding, much less appreciating how vulnerable that position is.

Speaker 5 (42:58):

I think that conversation can begin with how a student addresses their instructor. I think if you're willing to have that conversation with your students, it starts when they call you professor and you're not, and I think that's an important way to inform and way to start teaching because it's a teachable moment if we're going, if that's why we're there. And for me, it was easy to sort of have that conversation because I didn't have anything on the line. And it's so much harder when your job is at risk with, when you worry about that with the conversations that you want to be able to have. I think that's one of the beautiful things about academia is that you should be able to have that freedom to say things that aren't pretty, that can't be retaliated against in a way.

Speaker 2 (44:04):

Just to piggyback on that, I'll say a couple things. I think establishing that respect, what you were saying, Kate is important ahead of time. Some adjuncts do have their students call them by their first name. I never did. Because I think establishing that respect is important. And I spoke to a colleague over a year ago, I think, who had overheard a student, an undergraduate student talking about her adjunct professor, and this undergraduate student said something along the lines of, he's not even a real professor, he's just an adjunct. So I think that speaks to what you were saying, Christine and what you were saying, marina, that students don't necessarily know. They don't understand what the adjunct role is. So I'm actually interested and surprised that a student came to you and wanted to do an article because surprising most students I don't think realize what the adjunct is. So having that conversation is important and establishing respect early on is important too, if they do realize what the adjunct is and they don't have that respect. I have another question or two.

Speaker 2 (45:21):

I've had a couple of conversations with a couple of my panelists recently, and all of us like teaching, all of us enjoy teaching. We want to perhaps seek full-time teaching positions in the future, and perhaps I'm mistaken, but I don't think anybody graduates graduate school or an M F A program with the intention of, or I'll rephrase. The goal is not to be an adjunct. The goal is to eventually get a full-time teaching position, and sometimes adjuncting can lead to that and oftentimes it doesn't. But we've spoken about how we don't adjunct. We've chosen not to adjunct, or in my case, I've left adjuncting because we want to work on our writing. We want to get our writing out there. We want to publish and work on our writing credentials. So what I am slowly making my way around to is the question, is the teaching experience that we gain from adjuncting or is it our writing credentials and our name more valuable when we're seeking full-time tenured positions? Because I've heard both. Are they equal? Are they different? Are they just as important? I've heard people say that, oh no, you need a lot of teaching experience when you're going for full-time positions, and the more adjunct positions you have, the better. And then I've heard, no, it's your writing credentials. The more established you are in your writing career, the better. They won't care about your teaching experience if you're widely published. So how do you guys feel about that?

Speaker 4 (47:02):

Just as someone who has very recently had a lot of experience being on near and in the middle of hiring committees at the college, the general consensus is, at least for the positions they were hiring for teaching experience was vastly less important than research or publication

Speaker 2 (47:28):

Could depend on the position or the institution that you're applying for.

Speaker 4 (47:32):

Well, I mean, absolutely. It's going to depend on the position that you're applying for. If you're looking for a research one institution, a big university, a land grant, then obviously they're going to want research. Maybe if you're looking at the smaller liberal arts college, the slack, then teaching is probably more prioritized there. And every university in college has its own institutional culture, but I think the larger majority of it is based on what you've done that they can look at because they can look at your evaluations and they can look at your appraisals, but they can't really look at artifacts of your teaching that have a real meaningful reflection of it. So I think that's probably why at least I feel there's a stronger bias towards what you actually put out there into the world, what you publish.

Speaker 6 (48:30):

I mean, I don't have experience applying for the full-time positions, but I know that when I was applying, even just for the adjuncting, the more you have on your resume, the better. And it didn't necessarily have to be teaching. I know one university took me and I had only taught two semesters of creative writing, and they took me and asked me to teach remedial writing and composition and all these other things that I'd never taught before. And I was like, I have no experience with this. I mean, with writing, yes, of course, but I think in part they're so sometimes desperate as the semester gets closer to fill positions. But I think in part too, it was that I had other things that reflected tutoring and other experience that reflected that, or even publications, I don't know. But yeah, I mean, I think what I'm hearing more and more as I'm thinking about going back onto the job market is that it is to a greater extent whether or not you've published something. You look at the listings, AWPs job listings, or what is it? Chronicle of Higher Education, whatever it is. You look at them and a lot of them say, you must have published at least two books, and that deters people right away. I mean, if you don't have that, you don't have that. So

Speaker 2 (49:47):

That's why I asked, because that's what I see most often when I've perused the listings. They might say two to three years of teaching experience or three to four years of teaching experience, but they always, or not always, but most often they'll say one book and another on the way, or two books and a third. I've even seen five books published and I said, wow. Or a significant record of publication, and it automatically deters me. So that's why I asked that question. I would like to talk for a couple of minutes about the adjunct pushback. That was something that Christine had talked to me about, and that's important. So how are adjuncts and part-time lecturers organizing and pushing to get better support, benefits and contracts? In other words, what kind of power do you have as an adjunct? And just for example, was it, I think it was back in February, the adjunct walkout day that was organized nationally. So what kind of power do we have as adjuncts?

Speaker 3 (50:53):

So I think speaking in the classroom is important, talking to the students about it. I think getting articles published somehow in the big publications, I think that's important. But I really do feel like, again, I hate using this language, but until the consumer that students and their parents are made aware of the adjunct situation, I'm not sure how much can be done. And it's problematic in a city like New York where I feel I'm often made to feel lucky for having the positions that I have. So a part of me is just like, oh, I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm teaching. I'm adjuncting, and I know that it's like a revolving door. If I'm out, I know at least 10 other of my friends who want the adjuncting gangs that I have. And so that's really hard to organize. Moreover, I don't know who else is adjuncting in my institution.

Speaker 3 (51:45):

Really. They keep us apart. So again, it's really hard to unionize that way. So I think one of the most profound ways is to think of it or market it as a consumer issue, that there is a good that is being offered to the students. And again, I hate that, but there is a product, I guess, that we're kind of peddling. And if the parents are not getting their money's worth, if the loan co-signers are not getting their money's worth, then I think that should make them angry enough to care that their higher education institutions are using exploitation labor.

Speaker 2 (52:25):

So with that said, it's actually four 15 and we have to end. Please come talk to us. We'd still love to answer your question.

Speaker 7 (52:40):

Thank you for tuning into the A W P podcast series for other podcasts. Please visit our website@www.awpwriter.org.