The Adjunct

I’m starting to feel like a broken record, but here we go again!

His class is based on the discussion. He likes student who take part in the class. He is hard on grade the essay. Very strict and high-standard. Don’t expect to get A easily. It is extremely hard!

Things this student admits, whether knowingly or unknowingly:

*An A is possible, it is just extremely hard.

*I have high-standards.

*Students who participate do better than those who don’t.

Again, is a professor who has high-standards really something students need to be warned about? Please contemplate the difference between a professor who is strict and has high-standards, such as myself, and a professor who in unfair in their rules and erratic in their behavior. I had professors like that in college: the sort who were just mean and it was impossible to get an A in their class. That’s not what this student is saying about me, and if it were, I’d take note and change my behavior immediately.

What this student is saying is that I am a real college instructor. Someone who has strict rules and adheres to them. Someone who does not give an A or even a B grade unless a student has worked hard and earned it. Someone who does not allow students to sit and stare during discussion, or be otherwise checked out during class, not without ensuring those students will either not pass or barely pass with a C.

Yet, as I read review after review saying this exact same thing, I feel that I am generating bad will because of my work ethic. I feel that slowly the students are reacting, rebelling against the professor who keeps strict attendance, demands high performance, and isn’t afraid to fail anyone who doesn’t work their ass off in the class.

Should I instead just sit back and enjoy the toboggan ride? Take attendance but not enforce any policy regarding excessive absences? Give everyone who shows up and turns something in a B? Reserve C grades for those that failed? Hand out A grades as though they were gold stars for effort? Show twice as many movies, lecture aimlessly and allow students to put their heads down? Give extra credit to anyone who has an excuse for missing class or for not doing the work?

I just can’t help but feel that my ratemyprofessor.com ranking would be much higher. People would say things like, “He’s really nice and the class is fun! Totally recommend!”

During an in-class free write, a student asked if it was okay for them to just right “I LOLed” instead of “I laughed out loud.”

“No abbreviations, please,” I replied with mild amusement.

Another student groaned. “So what do i write instead of WTF?” she asked.

“Write it out,” I repeated. “No abbreviations.”

“So I can swear?”

I then had the distinct pleasure of announcing to a college classroom, “This is an English class, for God’s sake! Write out What the fuck, not WTF!”

Adjuncts such as myself can sometimes qualify for partial health coverage. This is a very rare thing for adjunct professors, and only occurs in certain districts when the adjunct in question has achieved what is usually known as “preferred rehire” status, or as I like to call it, “tenure for part-timers”. Among a few other things, pref. rehire status grants a partial reimbursement of medical expenses, never in excess of 50%.

One district that I taught at wanted to see copies of my medical bills every six months, and then would reimburse me either half my expenses or $600, whichever was smaller. Guess which one it always was?

Another district allowed me to buy into their HMO plan. They’d put me and my life partner on the HMO plan in exchange for about $375 garnished out of my paycheck each month. This is about what we had to pay privately, but the college’s plan had better co-pays and coverage.

How do you get pref. rehire? Again, different from district to district, but usually you need about three years working as a part timer at a college, positive student evaluations, positive classroom observation reports, and a hell of a lot of paperwork signed in triplicate by the dean. Once you have it, going just one semester without being assigned a class can lose it for you, and require you to start at square one. Please keep in mind this is for part timers, not tenure for full time instructors.

Once you have it, you have to sign a lot of paperwork, including a yearly affidavit, to get your partial health insurance reimbursement. The reason for all the paperwork and the affidavit (which you pay to have notarized out of your own pocket) is to confirm that you are really married to who you say you are married to, and to be sure that no other college is giving you partial reimbursement.

What really frustrates me is that you have to fill all these forms out once each year. There’s a lot of them, too! They want every single piece of information about the person you are married to, and you both have to sign that affidavit. You have about a two week window, or you lose the insurance for the year. They are quite firm that no exceptions shall be made.

I also love that it is forbidden for us to get additional reimbursement from the other colleges we work at. I can see wanting to ensure you don’t get over 100%, but what’s wrong with someone working a full load between two different colleges getting 50% from each? Why can’t I have full health insurance? I’m certainly working full time, just between two (often three) different colleges. My training and credentials are identical to the other full time faculty. My hours are the same, if not worse. Screw it, they are worse.

Recently, my district cut their reimbursement for part-time faculty. Yay. Here’s a post to our faculty listserv, reprinted with permission, from an ajunct colleague who would like to be known as Professor Rant:

I also assume that there will be no way to offset the cost of 
insurance for those of us who work elsewhere. Next summer, part-timers 
will receive an affidavit from Human Resources WITH WORDING IN CAPITAL 
LETTERS threatening what will happen if we don’t comply, which we will 
have to have notarized at our own expense, stating that we are not 
receiving insurance elsewhere. We can’t pay half at two schools, for 
example, to get full benefits.



We will also not be able to count summer classes towards our health 
insurance. If we only have three during the school year, for example, 
picking up a summer class will not change anything and we will lose 
insurance entirely. I pursued this issue in several places and was 
told change was impossible.



An across the board pay cut, say 10%, if that is indeed coming, will 
not be fair either to part-timers for the same reason the sales tax is 
not fair but is called regressive. We exist at a lower income level, 
so any reduction will cut into our ability to meet basic needs, as 
opposed to cutting into what I think economics calls wealth, available 
money to buy luxury items, invest, etc. California offsets this 
disparity by not charging income tax on food.



We still are paid less, but the 75 or whatever percent doesn’t tell 
the whole story. We still have significantly fewer step increases for 
our years of experience. We have no other benefits, nor the advantages 
of a sabbatical. There are hidden losses as well. Some of us have to 
rent instead of put equity in a home, and we have less money to invest 
and watch grow. Nor do we get help with computer costs for school 
tasks that now are mandatory. There is more. . . .



The school is sitting on a mammoth debt it has never fully recognized 
or adequately sought to address. How many millions (tens of millions, 
hundreds?) has the school saved since its inception by relying on part- 
time work? If there weren’t a large and flexible pool of willing part- 
timers all these years, the school would have had to hire full-timers 
and made drastic changes in everything — salary, benefits, programs, 
class sizes, and anything else that comes under this allotment.



I do want to make a show of respect to FA and our representatives 
there, whose motives and integrity I do not question in the least. I 
have followed events from the sidelines for over twenty years, 
especially through a former member, and do have a sense — but only a 
sense — of how demanding and tedious and frustrating their work is, 
this largely because of the inflexibility and blindness of the 
district. I also realize that without the work of some, things would 
be much worse.



The listserve, I realize, is not the right place to make these 
comments. But it is a place where I can speak. Also I need a place to 
exercise the critical demands of my profession. The changes may be 
inevitable, but only that. Please, let’s not call them necessary or 
fair or right in any other way. Let us call a pile of manure for what 
it is: a pile of manure.



But let us see if we can make the pile smaller.



And please, let’s not remain silent, allowing someone else the chance 
to think all is right and good. Please rant where ranting is in order. 
Also, bottling our frustration up is unhealthy.



In my state 75% of all college instructors are adjunct. What do you think this sort of treatment does to our morale, our work effort, our happiness and productivity?

Today in class, a student said that I remind them of the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. I would have liked to have told her what fictional character she reminded me of, but they don’t make films about idiots who work at McDonald’s.

The chair of my department is paralyzed from the waist down. She told me that the other day a student angrily told her that she was “a hard ass” in fron of her entire class. I asked her how she responded. “That’s what happens when you spend your life in a wheelchair,” she replied. Ha! Right on.

Just in time for my birthday, a couple of really nice comments left about me on that miserable site.

He is a VERY good teacher. Lectures with power& inspiration, because he definitely inspired me. He is very STRICT, but he does that to make sure you get ur work done. Class consists of 3 essays(1/month). Easy Quiz everyday. Short Readings everynight. Tough,yet reasonable grader & has a portfolio at the end of the quarter. 1 novel throughout class.

I actually feel uncomfortable when students start saying I inspire them. I’d rather hear comments that indicate strict but fair, because that is a type of pride I can feel comfortable with. Whenever we get into this “he inspired me” stuff I get uncomfortable. Obviously I am touched and proud to have made some kind of impact in someone’s life, but it puts a weird emphasis and added importance to what is still just my day job.

This class is heavily centered around discussions, so be prepared to share. I recommend taking this class if you are willing to put a lot of effort into writing. Believe me, an A is achievable if you really work hard for it. Lewis is more than willing to give input to rough drafts, so take advantage of that.

What I really like about this comment is the idea that the A can be achieved if YOU put the work into it, and that I am there to offer great help if YOU take advantage of me.

I had a student last quarter who got very angry about her failing grade and insinuated that I hadn’t told her what to do to pass the class. She claimed, at the end of the quarter mind you, that I had never fully explained the concepts she was being expected to demonstrate in her essay, that my lectures were sparse and left her confused. I countered that she never ONCE raised her hand and asked a question. Not once. I also added that she missed many of the key lectures due to her frequent absences and never sought to make up the work. In addition to all this, her essays failed because none of them were even close to the minimum page length (most were less than half of what I asked for) and all of them were incomprehensible attempts at empty summary.

So rarely is the emphasis upon what a student puts into class, and so often it is recriminations against the teacher. When I was in graduate school a fellow candidate responded to my own complaints about the faculty by saying, “These professors can’t teach you anything, but you can learn quite a lot from them if you put in the effort.” Veyr true.

I guess that is why I feel uncomfortable at the idea of my class inspiring someone. Inspire yourself. Show us what you can do.

Oh, this one is just lovely:

He is kind of weird. Very strict to the grade of your essay. His grade standard is A is very impressive and excellent. B is good and impressive. C is sort of OK or just so~so. His writer journal and quiz are not hard. He speaks a lot about fiction, but teach a little on writing. Overall, dont take him if u r a ESL student or u want get a good grade

I am weird because A = excellent, B = very good and impressive, and C = satisfactory? That’s weird? That’s what the grades are supposed to designate! What do you expect, an A for doing “just so-so” work?

Oh, and I love the little dig of “don’t take him if u r a ESL student” as some kind of insinuation of prejudice on my part. Fuck you. I give out plenty of A grades to students who happen to be ESL. You get the grade you earn. In fact, if you asked me to name my top 3 students ever, two of them would be non-native speakers. So, really, fuck you for implying some kind of bias on my part. I work damn hard to grade essays anonymously, and to ensure that everyone gets a fair shake in my class. You get the grade that you earned, not the one I gave you.

You want an A? You have to work for it, and work hard. I’ve had non-native speakers put native speakers to shame with the excellent quality of their work.

So, seriously, go fuck yourself.

By the way, “He speaks a lot about fiction, but teach a little on writing.” The class is English 1B: Literary Analysis. You are expected to know how to compose a college level essay at this point, and the class is supposed to focus on how to read, analyze, and respond to fiction and literature.

I love how no matter how high a level English class I teach, I still get students walking in who say, “I’m not really good at essay writing. I hope this class teaches me the basics, because I sure could use it.” No! High school is supposed to teach you the basics! Not my college level English class. My class is supposed to build upon what you already know, but these students can’t even properly define what a thesis statement is or what an introduction paragraph functions to do. “Uh…an introduction paragraph is…uh…it is supposed to grab your audiences attention?” No, and you can drop all that attention grabbing nonsense behind when you are writing a contextual analysis of a piece of literature. You introduction should, in addition to containing your thesis, contain a summary of all the topics of support that you will be using to explore and ultimately prove your thesis. No, not a summary of the short story you read for this assignment. No, not a summary of what a contextual analysis is. No, not a cutesy question such as, “Why do we fight?”