"Are we on for tonight?" the department chairman asked, as he popped his head through the door. It was the first time all semester that I had had students take advantage of my office hours, so he picked a good time to check in on me. (I am working!)
"Absolutely," I said.
We had planned on having him visit my classroom that night, and he was making sure it was still a go. Truth be told, I was a bit anxious about it. It had been some time since any colleagues had observed my teaching. This was my first semester moonlighting as an adjunct at a nearby state university, and I wanted to make a good impression.
I was excited at the prospect of teaching there, and not just because of the extra money. I had just received tenure at a private university, so the chance of doing something new — even if it was basically the same thing I was already doing, but in a different place — was intriguing.
What's more, teaching American government during the election sounded pretty easy. As an introductory course, it would not require much prep. "I'll just go in once a week and talk about the election," I told a friend.
I didn't know what to expect from the students, but I was pleasantly surprised. They were more interesting than the students on my home campus. The night class had a lot of "nontraditional" students. They were also more racially diverse. About half the class was African-American, and it included recent immigrants from Jamaica, India, and Pakistan. I suspect there were more non-Caucasians in this one class than in my six-plus years of teaching my other courses.
The students were also not as affluent as the ones I have come to know at my private university. It was the first time I've ever encountered a student who truly could not afford one of the books. We were able to work around the issue without much difficulty, but when we ended up using the book less than I had anticipated, I couldn't help but feel guilty for making her and the others incur what was an avoidable expense.
It didn't take much for me to love the class — the experiences, the insights, the level of engagement. I was particularly impressed by a 50-year-old mother of two who works full time at a hospital. She typically takes two classes a semester; this semester she was taking three. Most class sessions ended with us chatting in the parking lot. She was on target for a 2012 graduation, and was annoyed at the general laziness of young people today. I remember thinking how much she would dislike the students at my day job.
I was also surprised at how interested the students were in me. "What do you do other than teach here?" they wanted to know. They seemed used to the idea that their professors had other lives, but I was reluctant to tell them what I did. Did they view my private university as a competitor? Would they hold it against me? (When you are only on the campus four hours a week, the significance of everything is exaggerated.) I ended up telling them what I did, but not till very late in the semester. Not only did it not bother them, but I ended up advising a student on one of my university's graduate programs.
I didn't need to hide my moonlighting from everyone on my home campus. But I did. "You are a free agent," I was told when I was hired. Yet I was still concerned it would be held against me — the first time I missed a deadline for a report or couldn't make a meeting or work an open house. And it would be difficult to complain about being overworked if people knew I was teaching at another institution.
The best part of my new job — I might be exaggerating here — was that since Tuesdays were my regular days off at my home campus, I could wear the same shirt and pants on Monday and Tuesday, or Tuesday and Wednesday. "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes," Thoreau said. Not only did this one not send me shopping, but I didn't even need to do more ironing.
Adjuncts on my home campus mostly wander around officeless, so I was happy to share an office with 12 (!) others. Thankfully, our schedules were different enough that I only ever met two of them. I've grown accustomed to having my own space, but sharing an office was only awkward once — when one of my office-mates had a loud and contentious phone call with his ex-wife. I made myself scarce and ended up missing a student who came by to talk about her paper.
The only real difficulties of teaching at the state university had nothing to do with the students. I had several problems navigating its techno-bureaucracy. Was the classroom equipped to show a DVD? Why couldn't I open some e-mail attachments sent via the campus-mail system? How do I submit final grades? Routine tasks I would have handled easily here on my home campus became chores and obstacles there because the procedures were all strange to me.
My assumption that the night course wouldn't require much prep time was right, but the additional mental weight was considerable. The newness factor faded after the second week, and then it just became work. Every Tuesday I would leave the house thinking about all of the other things I could — and sometimes should — have been doing. I quickly found myself less invested in my adjunct work. It was not until final grading, for example, that I typed the students' names into a spreadsheet, which is the way I normally record grades throughout the semester. Instead, I had written the grades next to their names on the attendance sheet I received from the university at the beginning of the semester.
For my regular courses, I'm never too far from e-mail. But for my part-time gig, I would often forget to check in for days. It was the only time a student ever commented about me not responding to an e-mail message in a timely fashion. Another student was surprised to receive a response from me on Thanksgiving. Little did she know, the holiday break was the only time all semester I had had to catch up.
Yet I was not the only party less invested in the relationship. The night the department chairman came to observe my classroom, he said he was not sure if we had met before. Indeed we had. It was only a chance encounter a couple of days before classes started. I was on the campus doing paperwork and picking up keys, and he was in his office on the computer. I thought I should introduce myself, but I came away feeling like an intruder. I had been hired via e-mail; I chalked up the absence of an actual job interview to the fact that I was tenured somewhere else — obviously, I could teach.
Not only had he not insisted on an interview before hiring me, but he also offered me another course for the very next semester before visiting my class or seeing my student evaluations.
The whole process of getting hired — it was too disordered to be deliberate — was rather odd. The chairman and I had had a series of e-mail exchanges for years before the scheduling worked out. And when it did, it was only a few weeks before the start of the semester. I recall thinking how difficult it must be for adjuncts not knowing till the last minute about work and not being able to count on a steady income. If I didn't have a full-time position elsewhere, the uncertainty would have been harrowing.
As for the chairman's classroom visit, I'm not sure of his impressions. There's supposed to be "an evaluation letter" coming, but I've yet to see it.
I thought teaching at the state university might be an opportunity to make connections with my political-science colleagues in the region. But somehow, my tenured status got lost in the translation. To them, I was just another hired hand. No one in the department sought me out, and I soon stopped hoping that they would. I had too much to do.
Needless to say, the experience gave me greater respect for the adjuncts I work with at my home campus. In recent months, I've made a more concerted effort to get to know them, and help out whenever I can. I also cannot help but think about the bigger picture. As the percentage of courses around the country taught by adjuncts continues to rise, it would seem the processes by which they are supported, evaluated, and compensated are going to have to be revisited. If not, we are going to see a considerable shift in the nature and quality of higher education.
