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[onilne_adjunct]

Stolen from the non-tenure track:

dr dre posted this in the "In the Classroom" thread, and I thought we could use an entire thread dedicated to a Foxworthy-like analysis of the adjunct.

So my upper-level class filled out evaluations today. When I returned to the room, one woman raised her hand and earnestly asked, "Are you an adjunct professor or a professor professor?"

Sigh.

So I answered. Then she asked what the difference is between an adjunct and a professor.

Suddenly I was channeling Jeff Foxworthy. I heard myself say, "Well, if your professor has ever met with you in the hallway, in the coffee shop, in the library, or in his car, he might be an adjunct." 

Your daily commute to school consists of walking from the bedroom to the coffee pot to your computer in your home office.

You never actually see any of your students (and seldom hear their voices).

[finallyfullprof]

...if you've ever had a student plagiarize all the discussion board participation posts from another student or a web site.

...if you've ever been told how "easy" your job must be since all you do is "set up your course and then play on your computer once in awhile."

...if you've ever been accused of being "asocial" or "not really involved with your students" even though you spend more time with them online individually than you do in your f2f classes.

...if you have four email addresses of your own and at least two email addresses for each of your students so you can communicate when the school's server goes down again.

...if you've spent months learning to use Platform X (which was supposed to solve all your problems) only to learn that it's now obsolete and you're being forced to switch to Platform Y (which will really solve all your problems, we promise this time).

...if no one from IT has ever consulted you about what your online teaching needs actually are before IT makes decisions about hardware, software, and planned outages.

...if you're required to keep campus office hours during which no one ever comes to see you since your students don't care if they ever meet you in person.

...if your students send you snotty emails about having to come to campus a couple of times during the semester to take proctored tests because "I took online classes so I wouldn't have to worry about that sort of thing."

...if your students think online = correspondence and attempt to do an entire semester's worth of work during the last two weeks of class.

[zuzu_]

...Microsoft Office 2007 is destroying your life.