The Adjunct Track

Avoiding Adjunct Burnout

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By Jill Carroll

Last month I was sitting with several full-time faculty members when the topic of conversation turned to how we were all buried with end-of-the-semester grading. One by one, the full-timers began to list off the 50, 60, or even 70 papers and exams they had to grade. I just nodded my head and smiled sympathetically. Finally, one of them asked me how many students I had. I told the truth: 195. After a 20-minute discussion of grading techniques, time-management practices, and the general adjunct perspective on life, one of my colleagues asked: "How do you keep from getting burned out?"

Good question. Most adjuncts have to fight hard against burnout that derives from lots of sources, three in particular: We tend to have more students than the full-time faculty, which means we have more grading, and more people pulling and grabbing for our time and attention in office hours. And we tend to teach the same courses over and over again, term after term, and boredom leads to its own special form of burnout. Finally, we often teach year-round, so we don't have most or all of the summer off, like many of our full-time colleagues.

And for all of this, we make very little money and usually receive no benefits.

By the end of the semester, adjuncts can be surly, hostile, and worn down to a bloody nub. And since "the system" isn't about to do anything to address adjunct burnout, we are once again on our own. Short of packing a change of clothes and a toothbrush into a little bag on a stick and running for our lives, what can we adjuncts do to avoid a major case of burnout?

The first step is to manage well those hordes of students and their piles of papers and exams. I addressed some of this in an earlier article on time management. Without solid time-management practices, your students will eat you alive. You must set boundaries. Set boundaries for your grading so that you don't overgrade and burn too much time and energy. Set boundaries with your students so that you are not at their beck and call. I see adjuncts fall into this trap routinely. We buy into this line that suggests students will get ripped off if they don't have the same access to adjuncts as to full-timers. We overcompensate and try to be extra-available in all sorts of ways. We end up giving up too much of ourselves to the students, often much more than the full-timers ever think about giving. That's a surefire path to burnout.

Don't give your students a half-hour when 15 minutes will do. Convert as much student contact as you can to e-mail communication, so that at least you can be at home in your pajamas with your loved ones while you deal with it. Don't give them tons of one-on-one attention to make up for some sort of guilt from the academic establishment. You're their instructor, not their mother. Unless you set boundaries, you'll end up taking out your burnout on your students. And that would be really, really bad.

In order to avoid the burnout that comes from boredom, look for ways to modify your courses when you can. Part of what makes us love academe is that we get to learn new things and spend time with new ideas. Teaching the same courses with the same material all the time doesn't do much to nurture that love of learning. Look for ways to change your course content or course assignments so you can have a little variety in your life. Granted, adding a new book or reading to your syllabus means more prep time for you. But often that additional preparation is precisely the thing that brings you new energy and excitement.

I'm not suggesting that you regularly change your whole syllabus. Just replace an old, familiar, worn-out reading with something new. Revamp an assignment or exam for freshness. Experiment with a new teaching method -- anything to alleviate the monotony and tediousness of teaching the same courses over and over.

An adjunct friend of mine did this recently. His teaching style focused on lecturing. And because he is good at it, it worked for him and for his classes. He got great evaluations and the students learned a lot. Everything was fine. Except he was bored. He'd taught the same course five semesters in a row and was scheduled to keep teaching it. His solution was to adjust his teaching style. He decided to build in more discussion time in his class period. He learned how to write good discussion questions, how to do damage control when students say wacky things, and how to maintain control of the course content while giving much of the class time over to student discussion. Best of all, it worked. He felt energized, and so did his students.

Finally, there is the burnout that comes from working year-round. Only those of us in academe or education balk at having to work through a summer. We adjuncts who work year-round must do what everyone else who works year-round does to avoid burnout: Take full advantage of the breaks that come our way. In some schedules, these breaks can add up significantly. For example, I teach year-round but end up having seven full weeks off annually just from time that comes between the terms. And that doesn't include holiday or mid-semester breaks. Now, it would be easy for me to use up many of those days and weeks with adjunct work. But I don't. I draw stern protective boundaries around those time periods so that I don't give them away to students or administrators. Truth is, the "students" are not my students anymore -- the semester is over. And because the semester is over, my contract is fulfilled and the administrators don't have the claim on me they like to think they have. They don't pay me enough to make that full-time claim on my time. You either. So, protect your time off.

In short, you have to make yourself a priority. Like everyone else working in America, you must find ways to rejuvenate yourself amidst the drains of professional life. Make time in your day, week, or month to do the things that restore your energy. Force yourself to take a real lunch break every day. Take a nap that one day a week when you have an afternoon free. Go for a run or do yoga those two mornings a week when you don't have class. Take one weekend a month and go on a day trip to a lake or a park or a museum.

One day last summer, I had finished a three-hour morning class and was headed home. I had a decent pile of grading to do and figured I would spend the rest of the day finishing it. I was so burned out, I sat in my car at a stoplight and started to cry. In a flash, I decided not to turn right toward home. Instead, I turned left toward the beach about 20 miles away. I stopped at Wal-Mart for a $9.99 swimsuit and a bottle of water, used the terry-cloth seat covers in my truck for a towel, and spent the afternoon lying on the beach listening to seagulls and surf. I felt so much better when I came home that night. Sure, I had all that grading to do, but I was restored and much more energized, so doing the work was a lot easier. I had made myself a priority that day and it paid off both for me and for my work.

One final suggestion: Take a bath! So many people overlook the restorative powers of a nice, long bath. Light some candles, pour in the bubbles and bath salts, play some nice music, pour your favorite beverage into a nice glass, and lock the door! Chances are, the world will do just fine without you for an hour or so. Just a few times a week can really make a difference. Will taking a spa bath solve global adjunct problems? Heck no. But it can help prevent your weekly burnout. Let somebody else carry the world on their shoulders for a while. You just focus on yourself.