The Adjunct

One of the stories that I require my students to read and analyze is “Brownies” by ZZ Packer. It is the story of an all-black Brownie Scout troop that goes off to camp and finds there is an all-white Brownie Scout troop there as well. The Brownies instantly want to kick the asses of each and every white girl in Troop 909, and they soon have an excuse when Arnetta hears one of the Troop 909 girls use the word nigger. The Brownies confront some of the Troop 909 girls in the bathroom, intending to beat the snot out of them, but discover that the Troop 909 girls aren’t just white, they’re developmentally disabled.

The story is not so much about racism as it is about children acting out the same hatreds of their parents, often without cause or reason. After the discovery that Troop 909 is developmentally disabled, we learn from their counselor that many of the girls are echolalic, which means they repeat what they hear without knowing what they are saying. If they did say the n-word, it was just an echo of what they may have heard from their parents, and this becomes a very clear parallel to the Brownies looking for a reason to beat up Troop 909 because of their race, an echo from their own parents.

It is a great story for analysis and discussion, and I always enjoy bringing it into class.

Last week, however, things didn’t go too smoothly.

I have two students, let’s call them Beverly and Tom. Both happen to be the only black students in my class. During discussion, Tom said something along the lines of, “I found myself questioning whether Arnetta is a reliable witness. Later, she couldn’t identify the girl who called them niggers, and I just feel she probably made it all up in order to start trouble.

Beverly, who was sitting two seats down from him, recoiled visibly when he said nigger, and before he had finished his sentence she demanded, “Will you please not use that word!”

Let me also take a moment to point out that these are, without doubt, the top two students in this class. At this moment, I remembered a very well written paper Beverly had turned in at the start of the semester about how she did not think anyone, including African-Americans, should use the n-word. Now she was voicing that belief in class.

“I think the important thing to remember,” I said carefully, uneasy with the subject, “is that Tom was using…that word…in analysis of the story. He didn’t say it at, or about anyone, and there was no intent to offend. Let’s focus on intent, and the fact that this is a respectful discussion among scholars.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “And I’m black.”

At this, Beverly visibly scoffed (this may be because Tom is much lighter skinned than Beverly), and Tom immediately took offense to this reaction. Trouble was brewing, and I decided to chicken out instead of going with my gut.

“I don’t think it is unreasonable,” I said, mostly to Tom, “for her to ask that we simply refer to…that word…as racial slur, racial epitaph, or just the n-word.”

Tom didn’t like this, and I didn’t blame him. It was the chicken-shit approach, and I was coddling Beverly unnecessarily.

“Well, then!” Tom continued, clearly annoyed. “What I was saying is that I think Arnetta might have been acting like, oh you…a total b-word.” He sarcastically acted like he should not even have said b-word, and it struck home for me how ridiculous it was for me to ask him to refrain from referring to a word that had appeared in the story I had assigned.

Tom is indeed an excellent student, and he had been hanging out with me before and after class, drilling me with questions about being a college professor, because he was very interested in teaching math after he graduated. I felt as though I had let him down. Actually, I felt that I’d let them both down. The whole class, in fact.

In my syllabus, for every class I teach, even introduction to grammar, there is a section that reads:

Also, please be notified that some students may deem some class content objectionable. It is not the instructor’s intention to offend, but to challenge students to analyze and interpret new ideas and concepts.

This was given to me during my time at the University of Arizona. My mentor had told me that students needed to be challenged, and they needed to be uncomfortable. The ultimate point of learning is to go outside ourselves, find something new; force ourselves to leave our safe boxes and be challenged by the world around us. I’ve required devout Catholics to write persuasive arguments in favor of legalized abortion, forced fierce liberals to rhetorically analyze Rush Limbaugh without passing any form of personal judgment, made countless conservatives and moralistic persons read stories about rape and suicide, not to mention the recreational drug use of a character named Fuckhead. I should have forced Beverly to hear the word nigger, not hurled at her or anyone else, but just spoken of in analysis of a story about how racism is passed from parent to child without anyone even noticing.

The worst part is that if Tom and Beverly hadn’t been black then I could have done it, no problem. The fact that I was white, that they were of color, all the history and hate and things associated with that word, intimidated me. I couldn’t stand there and tell a young, highly intelligent black woman that she had to sit and deal with this guy using the word nigger.

And if the situation were to ever repeat itself, I don’t think I’ll be capable of doing anything differently.

After reading the title of my previous post, my wife asked me, “So, when are we going to start being dated by Seinfeld references?”

“I think we already are,” I told her.

Oh. I’m getting old.

There is one constant, one fact, one basis of reality, which unites all teachers of all colors and creeds, everywhere: We don’t get paid enough for this shit.

The second, without question, is that no matter what subject we teach we need to make a lot of copies.

I’ve worked at many different colleges, and everyone has their own way of providing instructors with copier access. The most common setup is that there is a reprographics center where you bring your originals, fill out a request, sign a form that says you are not reproducing copyrighted material without permission, hand over the copyrighted material which you of course did not obtain permission to reproduce, and wait at least 24 hours for the work to be completed.

The best system I ever encountered was at a school whose English Department had their own high-end copy machine that we instructors were free to use anytime, and with no limits. Oh, I remember it fondly. That sucker could spit out 100 correlated and stapled copies of Jhumpa Lahiri‘s “The Third And Final Continent” in ten minutes flat. Did I mention no limits? Some schools give you a personal code with a set number of credits on it. If you go over, you’re screwed. There was nothing more freeing for me as an instructor to rest assured that if I needed copies of my tests, short stories, handouts, or other materials for class that I would be able to get them, printed quickly, and with no hassle. Ah, those were the days.

Last Thursday I walked into our college’s mailroom, where sits the best mimeograph machine that the 1973 Soviet Union had to offer. Every single instructor for the entire campus shares this one machine. As usual, it had a giant OUT OF ORDER sign taped to it. Alternatives? Slim. The school’s reprographics office is really the student copy center. We instructors can request copies there, but the center will charge our department exactly what they would have charged students. We’ve been told by our chair to only use “reprographics” if we absolutely, positively need to, and that they will know damn well who we are and how many copies we are charging to the department. They also take several days to process any request, even small ones. I had a class starting in twenty minutes and needed 25 copies of a one-page quiz. There was only one copier left on campus that I could use.

In the back of our division office, in the instructor’s break room, there is a copier even older than the one in the mailroom. We are each allowed only 10 copies per day on it. A sign taped above the copier tells us this, and also says (I shit you not) that we are being video taped even though, and I quote, “You can’t see the camera, but it’s there!” Did I mention this is in the instructor’s break room? No students allowed, only teachers. That really sets a nice tone towards a group of educators with advanced degrees who need to make copies in order to teach the future minds of our world.

Cameras be damned, I needed 25 copies, and went ahead and started copying my quiz.

When I was at about 17, the Earth shook and the windows rattled. Our gianourmous department secretary, who by my best guess weighs about 550 pounds, did something I had never before seen: she stood up and walked a few feet.

“Ya’ll know you ain’t s’possed to be making more than ten copies, right?” she asked me.

“Hmm?” I played dumb, and smiled blissfully at her.

“Sign says right there,” she pointed rather than walk over to it. I studied the sign curiously, as if for the first time. Yep, 10 copies per day.

“Oh, is that for instructors? I thought that must be for students.”

“Ten copies!” she snapped angrily. “Ya’ll use the mailroom if you need more.”

When I need more? When would I ever need just 10? The smallest class I had ever taught at that school was 25 students.

“The one in the mailroom is out of order,” I told her.

“Not my problem. Go to reprographics then. Go to Kinko’s then. Ten copies in here.”

She then turned around on her heel and lethargically headed back for her cubicle. Loudly, she commented to…I’m guessing either the air or the ghost of her dead co-worker…about ‘people commin’ in here and makin’ copies.’

I find incidents like this very discouraging, and demoralizing. When we have to battle to make copies of a quiz or assignment for our students, then it makes us more and more willing to just say, “Fuck this!” and call it a day. People always angrily rant about teachers who don’t even try, but they never ask why. Why do teachers give up? Why do we start thinking of the job as just another paycheck?

In the above situation, the priority should have been to getting the students their handouts. If I had been in there making copies of my manuscript, or if I constantly was in the office running off assignments at the last minute, then it would have been a different story. What happened was that the school’s main copier was broken, and I needed an alternative. We’ve been yelled at in advance about using reprographics, and even so, it really is just the student copy center, and they would not have done a rush job for me, even though it was only 25 copies. I can’t tell you how many times I do go to Kinko’s, or use my own home printer, to make copies for class and pay out of my own pocket.

The department secretary makes four times what I make (no exaggeration, I heard her mouthing off about her paycheck one day, and it is almost exactly 4X what I make…and I mean my total pay…from all the schools that I work at), and she also has full benefits and the job for life.

After this incident, I pay for the copies myself, or I print them at one of the two other schools I teach at.

I don’t go into the division office anymore.

“Oh, I’m not a professor.”

This is one of the most common things I used to find myself saying to students in the first few weeks of class. I always ask students to call me by my first name, but sure enough, one of them will soon raise their hand with a question and ask, “Professor…?”

While in grad school I was fortunate enough to be offered a two-year teaching assistantship at the University of Arizona. Each semester, we were given a few classes to teach while we pursued our degrees, and we also got to take part in a comprehensive teacher training program and mentorship, which covered absolutely every aspect of teaching rhetoric and composition at the college level. It was a great deal all around. We received excellent and extensive teaching training, and built up our CV by teaching freshman courses. The University loved it because they paid us in peanuts and tuition waivers instead of hiring any adjuncts, who might have demanded actual currency as pay. It was win-win…until we graduated, and were told that we were no longer hirable to teach the classes we’d been teaching for the last few years.

One day, our advisor made it clear that we were not to go around calling ourselves professors. He explained that a few GATs had once been overheard calling themselves this, and the real professors, people who clawed their way to tenure through the decade-long rigors of assistant professor, associate professor, etc., were very annoyed that some young, pimple-faced twenty-nine year olds were claiming the title as their own.

“But, aren’t we professors?” one of my fellow graduate students asked.

“No, no,” our mentor laughed. “You are teaching assistants. When you get your degrees, then you’ll be lecturers. Then, you hopefully can get on the tenure track and work your way towards professorship.”

So there you have it. Oh, and the term for us adjuncts isn’t even “lecturer, it’s visiting lecturer. That’s how they explain us disappearing after the only one semester. “He was only visiting. Let us never speak of him again.”

I stayed true to what my mentor taught us. Believe it or not, I had a great respect for anyone who had achieved the full title of professor, and I did not want to violate protocols by grabbing that title for myself before I’d earned it. Whenever students asked, “Professor…?” I would correct them by saying that I was a visiting lecturer. At that point they’d ask, “So…you’re not a real teacher?” Things would go downhill from there.

This all continued until very recently, when I was in a meeting with my department dean. One of my students was present at this meeting, and my dean referred to me as, “Professor…”

I was shocked! My dean knew exactly who and what I was. He knew that I was just an adjunct who was a new arrival to our district. I was only visiting to give a lecture, as they might say. Did he refer to me as a professor because a student was present? Was it just a slip of the lip? Did different schools perhaps have different policies about this sort of thing? I decided to investigate further.

As usual, wikipedia holds all the answers:

The meaning of the word professor (Latin: professor, person who professes to be an expert in some art or science, teacher of highest rank[1]) varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual.

This is consistent with what I was taught at the University of Arizona. However:

…whereas in the United States, Canada and Hong Kong, the term professor is used as a form of address for any lecturer or researcher employed by a college or university, regardless of rank.

That would fit more with my situation. Further reading of the article, and a browsing of the actual job titles of my full-time colleagues, clears things up a bit. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the schools I lecture at are community colleges. So far, none of these community colleges have any of their positions or job titles listed as professor, but rather everyone who is full-time is simply an instructor or lecturer.

Here’s the key, still from wikipedia:

In colloquial language, usage of the term may refer to any educator at the post-secondary level, yet a considerable percentage of post-secondary educators do not hold the formal title of “professor,” but are instead lecturers, instructors, and teaching assistants.

So in other words, here in these United States, any lecturer, instructor or even teaching assistant can be called “professor” while not actually having the title of Professor. I think this is very similar to the naval custom of addressing any officer who commands a ship as “captain” regardless of rank.

So what do I take from all this? That I am not a Professor, and my full-time colleagues at community colleges are not Professors, but our students can address us all as professor? The capitalization alone for this particular post is giving me a headache.

Fellow teachers, I want to settle this, but I need your help.

Fill me in on your thoughts and understanding of this subject. What’s the proper way for us to use “professor”, especially for adjuncts and community college teachers? Besides wikipedia, I have not been able to find a clear guide to this on the internet. If you know of one, post it. Otherwise, post what you know, and I’ll try to create one here.

Much of what I write on this website, in fact anything that I write anywhere, should be considered for the most part tongue-in-cheek. I have always enjoyed sharp banter and acidic wit, and this has culminated in my personal writings often being what I call sharp-witted but what most other people call snarky or, even more often, assholish*. Know please that no offense is intended, nor do I mean to convey a true superior attitude even though in jest my writings claim one. The key word in that previous sentence was jest.

Yes it is all a joke. Or, at least, it is written jokingly. I do not really feel that I know any answers, nor do I think myself particularly superior to anyone else, least of all tenured faculty or my students. I just happen to find that style of humor very amusing, and it creeps out in my more casual writings.

So please, before you jump to the conclusion that I am a pompous asshole, snarkily sneering at all that you hold dear, remind yourself that there is light humor in my writing. I feel the overall essence of my arguments and commentary is valid, but the manner in which I present it is more often than not, to be taken with a grain of salt, and a smile.

* Which I feel compelled to constantly remind them is not a word.