(Originally posted: 9/5/2011)
I’ve been teaching as an adjunct professor for several years now, beginning in January of 2005, and slowly growing my classroom presence until I now teach full time. It isn’t easy. In fact, its probably the most difficult job I’ve had, not barring the bottom of a backhoe trench in 100 degree/100% humidity weather. Aside from the typical classroom issues that all teachers have to deal with, these are just a couple of the monsters one must slay as an adjunct:
- Answering “What do you do?” — Whenever anyone asks me what I do for a living, I’m faced with a conundrum. Do I say that I’m an archaeologist? That’s how I think of myself, but when I say that, no one understands that I’m the guy at the front of a college classroom. If I say that I’m a college professor, they inevitably ask me where I teach. And that’s the bigger problem, because I actually work at three schools. Do I say all three? Choose only one? If I say more than one, then I have to explain what an adjunct is. If I only say one, then I’ll just have to explain later when the other schools come up. And it’s not just in casual conversation that this problem shows itself. When I submit papers to scholarly conferences, they always ask for my affiliation. Which school this time? I’ve taken to just rotating through the options, one conference at a time.
- Conflicting schedules — It’s hard enough for full-time faculty to keep a single academic schedule straight. I have three. Sometimes they line up, and other times they don’t. That’s even harder than never having them line up, because it’s just a bit more uncertainty. I’m writing this entry on Labor Day, because one school I teach at is in classes today. The other two schools are cancelled, of course.
- Office space — I’m also currently writing this from a group study room at the library, because this school doesn’t have any office space for me right now. When something does open up (“…any day now…”) I’ll probably be sharing an office barely big enough for one person with several others. Don’t get me wrong–full-time faculty are on one campus full-time, and they deserve the best facilities. I don’t begrudge my full-time colleagues their offices. But it is difficult to teach effectively when you don’t even have a desk to leave a pen in!
- Teaching outside your field, or not at all — I’m an archaeologist. I’m currently teaching 5 classes, none of which is archaeology. Now, as a broadly trained anthropologist with a background in classics and folkloristics, I can teach (and have taught) a wide variety of social science and humanities. I generally enjoy my classes, as do my students, but the fact remains: I don’t teach courses that are in my field. I teach whatever the department needs an extra prof to teach, whether it’s something that I really know well or not. Those semesters, I study harder than my students, for a course that I may never teach again. And that’s not the worst of it. Since the full-time faculty have first call for what and when to teach, I’ve often been given the evening classes, the last timeslot on Friday afternoon, etc. And in plenty of semesters, the students haven’t cared to enroll in those classes. When that happens, I get an email a few days before classes begin saying that my services will not be needed–and just like that all my preparation is wasted, and I’ve lost 20% of my income for the next several months.
- Convincing people that you’re not a sub-standard teacher — This is one that even my family has fallen victim to, from time to time. There is a sense in the general populace that universities are just clubs of scholars, and anyone who’s worthy can join. If you were good at your job, they’d hire you full-time (universities have endless money for payroll!), and since they haven’t hired you full-time, you must have been doing something wrong. When I explain that it’s simply a matter of the school not having an open position, I get pointed to spots in wildly inappropriate fields (biology, theater, etc.), as if any good scholar should be able to teach anything. Students don’t want a part-time professor, either. They’re coming from high schools where “part time” means “subsitute,” and “substitute” means “glorified babysitter.” (Having been a high school substitute teacher, I can attest to the accuracy of that notion. I don’t recall ever actually teaching anything in two years of substituting.) Coupled with #4 above, they might even be justified. More than once, I’ve had to admit that I simply couldn’t answer a student’s question because I’m an archaeologist, not a sociologist. On the other hand, the university actually expects me to do everything that full-time professors do in the classroom, and sometimes even places more oversight on me. I like to think that the education I deliver is every bit as good as that of a full-time prof, but that may not be the perception of the class and the community.
- Finally: the lousy pay — As I mentioned above, I’m currently teaching five classes across three different schools. This adds up to about $10,000 per semester (before taxes) or $20,000 annually. But not so fast! That income is also spread over only the 9 months of the academic year. I spend the whole spring semester scrimping to survive the summer! A full-time professor at any of my schools teaches only four classes per semester, but makes thousands of dollars more, PLUS benefits like health insurance and a retirement plan. So the school saves loads of money by keeping me tied into the adjunct position, and has no incentive to actually create a full-time position, no matter how good I am at my job.
If I take another job that does come with benefits, I’ll almost certainly have to give up teaching because the scheduling conflicts are just unmanageable. So if I want to both teach and get a full time job, I have to find a full-time teaching job. Which means that, as I write this in September, the earliest that job will come is about a year from now, next August. Another year of barely making ends meet.
Now, again, don’t take any of this the wrong way. I love my job(s), and I love being able to spend time with students as they learn their way through college. But I could do all that with a full-time position and much less headache. That may be the ultimate message here: I’m an adjunct professor. I love the “professor” and hate the “adjunct.”