I think each and every one of you deserve the title, because you are outstanding. You do a job that offers very little in worldly rewards. It doesn’t pay well, it doesn’t provide you with benefits, and it has no job security whatsoever.
Don’t misunderstand. There are blessings. I’m the first to say that I love my job. I love my students. I love what we do together. That said, there are lots of things I could do without.
Little things even. I don’t know why my parking permit has to loudly proclaim my lame status as an adjunct. What difference does it make? We’re not given lesser parking privileges. We’re not expected to park in some adjunct faculty lot. Although neither of these possibilities are true, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but as they aren’t – What difference does it make?
For me, the hardest part to swallow is the lack of job security along with the idea that somehow that’s my fault. If my class retention is poor, it must be something I’m doing. Where is the logic in that? In my department, we expect our students to attend class four nights a week for 16 weeks. Ain’t any other department with those kind of expectations. I mean, seriously. Would you study Japanese four nights a week for four months? Would you do anything four nights a week for four months?
The deepest sadness of being part-time, for me, is the lack of camaraderie. Early on in my career, I had visions of sitting around a hot cup of tea discussing my trouble explaining the ToBe verb or cradling a warm mug of hot chocolate while commiserating with my colleagues about the lack of time my students have. But there is no time nor place for that.
Of course I mind the denigration as much as the next fellow. The sense, the feeling, the weight of being less than, not as good as, not up to it. The unspoken differences. The unwritten rules. The unuttered nuances. Like the elephant in the living room, they are there and we all dance around them.
Shortly after getting my MA, I read an article in the LA Times about and by a woman who’d been working as a part-time instructor for 15 years. Having just come from the business environment where working generally meant in a real full time job with adequate pay and reasonable benefits, I was clueless. I read the article and thought, what an idiot. Now as I celebrate my 20th year at Palomar, I sometimes think the same thing.
