The Adjunct

I know that we are already two weeks into January, but I’d still like to take a moment to affirm my resolutions for this new year.

Last year I made ten resolutions, and managed to accomplish about half of them (this website being one of them).  Not bad for someone who spent several months with a cast on his foot!

The biggest promise to myself this new year is to never again make the mistake of last July, when I committed myself to a six day a week intense workload.  This is another reason why not all of my former resolutions were met, let alone the lack of regular updates to this blog.  I found myself being offered more and more classes, and considering both the economy at large and the fact that my state was firing adjunct professors left and right, I accepted everything I could.  The paychecks were great, but my life was hell.  I never saw my wife, was tired and exhausted and cranky all the time, and at the end my health just shattered and I barely made it to the end of the semester.

Never again.

Worst of all was that I started to hate my job.  The quality of my work went downhill, something that did not make me happy about going in to class everyday.  Also, I began losing all my patience with my students as well as the rest of the college staff.  Doing something that you hate is not how I want to live my life.  I love teaching, and I need to not only keep my hours reasonable, but I need to remember that the recurring frustrations of the job are something to be laughed off and left behind; not taken with you the cost of your own personal joy.

So that’s one resolution, I suppose.  The rest are either new, or continued from last year.

Shall we go backwards?  Nah, these are in no particular order.

*Approach my job as a fulfilling and joyful part of my life.

*Get in shape; lose weight.

*Finish editing my novel.

*Write those two short stories that I’ve been dawdling on.

*Start new novel.

*Actively seek publication for my writing.

*Learn Spanish.  Yes, Spanish.  I was born and raised in Los Angeles and it is fucking shameful that I don’t speak this.

*Take fencing lessons.  Doesn’t that sound cool?*

*Get readers together for English 1A, 1B, 2, etc (I’ll make a post about this later, but I have a rather fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants style as far as reading materials and associated quizzes are concerned.  I grab articles out of yesterday’s newspapers, rotate short stories, etc.  A more solid collection for each class of reading assignments, and their related quizzes and writer’s journals, will ensure more organization and less prep time on my part).

*Buy a house and get some chickens for the backyard.  Yea, you heard me. Why do you think I took so much work last year?  I had something in mind to save for.

I just saw this on the side-splittingly hysterical web comic Animals Have Problems Too:

Too true. I just repeated the bat’s line to a very talented student who told me she wanted to be an Art History professor. Wise words, bat. Wise words.

1. Show up.

2. Pay attention.

3. Do your work.

4. Behave.

1. Always Show Up Late.

2. Never slip into class quietly. Instead, make a big production of slamming the door behind you and shouting out, “Sorry I’m tardy! I had to go to the john!” If at all possible, drop all your books on the floor, too.

3. Better yet, don’t have your books with you.

4. Never bring a pencil to class. Always borrow someone else’s and forget to give it back.

5. Never bring paper. Let other people spend their money on stuff like that. Use their paper.

6. Use the paper you borrow to write a note. After you finish, make a big deal about passing – or better yet, throwing – it across the room to someone. Disturb as many people as possible.

7. Never, ever do your homework. The teacher will admire you for your consistency.

8. Lose your textbook the first week of school. Then yu will have a good excuse for not reading your assignments.

9. Draw as much attention to yourself as possible. Make funny remarks. Start arguments. Be loud.

10. Groan a lot.

11. Say, “This is BORING!” loudly every five minutes or so, especially if it is really quiet in the room.

12. Ask, “Why do we have to do this stuff?” as often as possible.

13. After the teacher says, “Turn to page 36,” say, “What page?”

14. Turn in all your assignments late. Better yet, never turn them in at all.

15. Whenever possible talk to your neighbor. If you absolutely can’t, stare out the window or draw airplanes on top of the desk.

16. When you get your test back with an F, shout, “This isn’t fair! The teacher hates me!”

17. Never show concern about your grade until the last day of the grading period. Then see if the teacher has extra credit you can do to make up for all 42 missing assignments.

18. If the teacher says, “No,” throw a fit.

19. When your group or partner is depending on you, show up unprepared.

20. If you have to read something in class, make it a magazine or comic book.

21. If you have to do a report, copy word-for-word from the World Book Encyclopedia.

22. If you decide to hand in some homework, make sure you have copied it from someone else.

They are having a rally in Berkeley regarding social security fairness for teachers. If you are a teacher (or just think we do work that deserves social security) and live in the area then please try and attend.

Numerous organizations will be using this rally as a model to spark action in other cities and states.

“An Energizing Rally For Social Security Fairness For Teachers”

You’ll be entertained and informed.

Sat. May 30, 11:00am – 12:30pm. Location: Berkeley Community Theater at Berkeley High School, 1930 Allston Way, Berkeley.

Parking: Allston Garage, one block east of school, $5

BART: One block south, one block west of downtown Berkeley Station

This is a One-Time Shot!

Two bills have recently been presented to our legislators. These bills, if passed, would repeal two unjust laws (the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset) that have financially disadvantaged teachers for decades.

These two unfair laws dictate that teachers who worked in the public sector prior to teaching, or during teaching, may not collect full Social Security benefits at levels that other contributors do, even when they paid the same amounts as others into the Social Security System. Furthermore, teachers may not collect Social Security benefits, at the same amounts as others, from deceased spouses, or collect full Social Security benefits that they earned as a dependent spouse.

President Obama stated he would approve the new legislation if it reaches his desk. So the time is right to act on this.

Most of the public, unfortunately, is not aware of this injustice facing teachers. In fact, many teachers are not even aware of it until they retire. While they receive Social Security statements each year stating what they will receive upon retirement, it is only later that
they learn the statements don’t apply to them because they are teachers in CA. And many, who became teachers later in life, were not told ahead of time that they would forfeit Social Security benefits when they became teachers.

This is it! We are so close — but we need you to show up and be counted! We have the press. We have a beautiful theater that holds 3,500 people. If everyone who came to our first rally brings five other people, we’ll fill the theater! Plus — You’ll have a great time and get informed!

Janet Roosevelt, niece of FDR and Eleanor will speak.

Steve De Peu, CTA retirement committee advisor, will inform you on the impact of the GPO and WEP and what NEA is doing to help repeal this legislation.

Mark Sternberger, NEA Board of Directors, will provide us with more information.

Gail Mendes, Secretary/Treasurer of CTA will also honor us with her presence.

You will be entertained by a fabulous band — The Angry Tired Teachers! They write their own lyrics and will tailor their songs to our cause. They will energize you, and make you smile.

For more information about the rally, or for more information regarding Social Security fairness, visit our website: www.socialsecurityfairness.com

“Why don’t you update your blog anymore?”

I was embarrassed just as much with the question as I was with the answer.

I had been so excited to get this site up and running, and then just when things were rolling I fell into a series of very unfortunate circumstances. I broke my foot and I broke my jaw, and as a result I broke my spirit for keeping most of the pleasures in my life in order. One of those pleasures was this blog.

I’ll give a much more detailed foot and mouth report later, but here is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to friend in which I describe what’s been going on these past two months. I think I capture my shattered hopes and dreams quite nicely.

My life has gone to absolute hell these last two weeks.

I haven’t even been able to stay on top of my emails. It’s a wonder I am still employed.

My foot is in a cast, and I have to go everywhere on crutches. This means I can go NOWHERE; you can’t get far on crutches. At work, I can’t even get from my classroom to the mailroom because it is too fucking far. They won’t offer any assistance for me (the disability resource center is for STUDENTS, and I am not a students). I get no paid time off. I have 7 more weeks of this.

I spend all my time at home in bed or in the reclining chair. Getting to the bathroom is hard. At night, my upstairs neighbor blasts us with endless thumping music from 11:00pm -6:00am. I feel like I am in a coffin.

And then there’s the bad part.

The bad part is that something is horribly wrong with my jaw. It has been hurting for months now, getting worse, and worse. I can barely eat, because it is so painful to chew. Yesterday I ate only soup all day. I went to the doctor, and they said to go to the dentist. I went to the dentist and he had no idea what was wrong with me; he pulled a tooth out of my mouth but it didn’t work. It is not going away and is freaking me out.

The closest anyone has come to a diagnosis is this bullshit umbrella term called TMJ, which basically just means “extreme jaw pain the won’t go away.” They treat it by putting you on musscle relaxers for the rest of your life. Jaw hurting today? Take this pill. That’s about it. No cure, just one of those things we don’t understand. I’ll spend the rest of my life like this. I’ll never be able to eat a hardroll sandwich again.

I am not doing well.

Suffice it to say, my enthusiasm for web logging did not sustain itself. I could barely keep on top of my grading, let alone the other aspects of my life.

However, I do not offer this up as excuse, but a humble explanation to the questiom, “Why no updates?”

I plan to rectify the situation. Although my foot is still in a cast, my jaw still in pain, and my upstairs neighbor still a tremendous douchebag, my spirit has slowly returned. As you can see from the last two posts, this current one, and the posts to come: I’m back, baby!

I also realize that the saddest thing on the entire internet is a dead blog whose final post reads: I’m back, and the blogging shall continue. I wrote several days of posts in advance, to be published at a healthy rate, as an insurance policy against that happening to me.

Here we go again!

I realized something about the life of a teacher last night.

It takes only a little to make it great, and it takes a lot to make it bad.

Baby ‘customizing’ advances claimed:

NEW YORK, March 3 (UPI) — A U.S. fertility doctor says that he will soon be able to allow parents to choose their babies’ eye and hair color.

Dr. Jeff Steinberg, whose Fertility Institute has clinics in New York and Los Angeles, says research that has already made it possible to select a baby’s gender has also yielded the technology to enable parents to make eye and hair color choices, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.

“In the process of doing gender selection … we’ve also uncovered the technology (to) characterize things like eye and hair color,” Steinberg, 54, told the newspaper.

Do we have to limit our choices to the color combinations available between my wife and I, or can we start sticking in genes for any option available from the whole human gene pool? 

If so, I’d like my baby to have purple eyes, skin that’s Obama-brown, and colorless, translucent white hair. Oh, and while we’re at it, make it twins! I shall name them The Sisters of Prognostication, Apathy and Decay, and they shall walk the land for twenty winters, spreading word of the New Order!

Seriously, did no one see Gattaca? This can only end badly: people with low life expectancy will impersonate British Olympic swimmers in order to become astronauts and travel to the sixth moon of Saturn.

Two of the headlines on CNN today demonstrated the great economic dissonance that is more and more prevalent in our country.

The first headline:

Top Republican unloads his mansions

Then, directly below it:

“Make every penny count, and count every penny.”

Compare the two articles, each dealing with the same economy. From the first article:

(CNN) — He has been estimated to be worth in excess of $250 million, but former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may just be belt-tightening along with the majority of Americans.

Romney, the former business whiz and governor of Massachusetts, is looking to unload two of his four mansions, collectively valued in the currently-sour real estate market at close to $10 million.

Compare to this excerpt from the second:

(CNN) —Orman: If you don’t have a good savings rate and something happens, where are you going to go?

That’s when you all of a sudden start putting things on your credit cards — that you can’t do anymore.

That’s when you then start to become an aid, you know, where you’re asking the state to aid you — food stamps and everything.

What should strike you about this is the great disconnect between the two. This is not meant as any form of attack on Romney, nor Republicans. Democrats in Washington are millionaires as well, and even if President Obama only owns one home, his bank account is quite full, just like nearly all our leaders.

No, this isn’t about politics, but it is about a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements: the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

As Orman tells people to pinch every penny, Romney unloaded a few of his spare mansions. As one talks about people going on food stamps, the other pulls in 20 million in spare change.

How can one world possibly understand the other?

Yet it is those penny-people who decide which multi-millionaire shall lead them, in both business and politics. And those chosen multi-millionaires shall try and see what they can do to make things right for the penny-people. It reminds me of one of those conversations where both people are talking to each other about completely different things, yet neither notices.

Fellow adjunct instructor and all around woman of letters Stephanie Han has written about her reaction after reading Naomi Wolf’s book, Misconceptions:

While she made a few good points, overall, she sounded so out of touch with the average working woman I wanted to throw the book out the window when I read it. The woe-is-me-and-my-group-of-friends-we-all-own-expensive-homes-and-are-lonely was insulting. Hers was not a perfect world but she didn’t seem to get that she had a much better situation than the burger slinging working person.

At the end of Orman’s interview, Larry King helped demonstrate the point I am trying to make by chipping in with his own ideas on what these penny people can do to stay afloat in these tough times.

King: Go cheap. Tip 15 percent, that’s it. Shop — bargain everything. … If tomatoes are 20 cents over there and 15 cents across the street, buy for 15 cents.

That’s right, the problem the penny people are having is that they must be tipping too high! Please, cut off those tips at 15% for your own good. Buy 15 cent tomatoes, because you’re gonna need every nickel.

While this is a little (okay, a lot) of a jeer against Bush, I hope you will also view this as a cheer for academics. The former President liked to deflect criticism by saying that history shall be the only judgement that matters. Well, the historians have made a statement, and it is not in Bush’s favor.

From CNN

(CNN) – Former President Bush has only been out of office for less than a month, but historians have already delivered an early verdict on his presidency.

In a survey of over 60 historians conducted by C-SPAN, the 43rd president ranks the seventh worst (and 36th overall) in the nation’s history, just edging out Millard Fillmore.

That’s pretty harsh. Fillmore is ridiculously unfunny, as seen below.

Oh, Millard Fillmore. He was the last member of the Whig Party, wasn’t he? Good for him! Fuck Andrew Jackson, right?

Continuing…

At the top of the list, the historians rank Abraham Lincoln as the best president in the nation’s history, edging out George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.

If only we could have a President who followed the writings of Abraham Lincoln, and tried to save our nation with policies modeled after Franklin Roosevelt’s.

Oh, wait.

I get it now.

The duck’s name is Mallard Fillmore, not Millard, and he’s a Republican.

Happy President’s Day!