The Adjunct Track

Back to School When You Never Left

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person The Rejection Letter I Wish I Could Send If we had to make up a story for why you might be interested in our position, then interviewing you was too risky. Peer Review Hirings and Firings The new law school at the University of California at Irvine gets some high-profile hires ... and other appointment news. Ms. Mentor Does This Make Me Look Old? Advice on how best to dress, and act, when you look as young as your students. Career News Gone, and Being Forgotten Why are some of the greatest thinkers being expelled from their disciplines? Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Jill Carroll

For many in higher education, the fall semester gets under way in a few days or weeks. Even if your college starts later in September, chances are you've already heard the "back to school" mantra that arises this time of year.

If you're an adjunct, however, you may never have left school in the first place.

Many of us are given the chance to teach year-round by adding summer classes, and we take the opportunity because we need the money. Full-time faculty members often teach during the summer, too, but they usually have first dibs on the classes that start immediately after the spring semester ends and finish up in a few weeks on a compressed schedule.

The leftovers -- classes that stretch the full summer, night classes, etc. -- fall to adjuncts. And we snap them up because, if we don't, we'll be waiting tables or delivering pizza all summer right alongside our students.

So, if you're a working stiff who's taught all summer after a "regular" nine-month schedule, you're probably not very excited by the prospect of starting a new school year. That leaves you ripe for burnout and bitterness.

Your bitterness may be driven by the assumption that full-time faculty members, with all their perks and power, have been "summering" away on paid vacations, living off fancy grants for which adjuncts aren't eligible, and whining that they don't have enough time off to do their writing and research because they have so many students, usually only a fraction of how many adjuncts teach. Can't you just feel your blood beginning to boil? I hear chains rattling, calls for revolution.

Actually, I have long loved the idea of a nationwide adjunct walkout. I would love to hear the giant sucking sound of the air being taken out of the sails of the modern university when over 50 percent of its faculty members don't show up for work. But the truth is, my description of the summering faculty member is a stereotype.

Now, it's true that some full-time faculty members have a cushy summer off and give not a second's thought to the adjuncts who carry far more than our share of the weight of the university for a pittance in compensation. Every summer about this time, I run into a full-time colleague on campus -- bubbling, relaxed, and refreshed from the summer off -- who asks me jocularly how I enjoyed my summer break.

But for every full-time professor living in a bubble, there are several others who aren't. They have spent their summers teaching right alongside adjuncts or, if not teaching, running the university by serving on myriad committees and doing other administrative work that, frankly, I think is what people do in hell, if there is one.

The message here: We're not alone. Getting past the stereotype is a must before you can even begin to start feeling better about not having had a break.

Of course, few workers in the United States -- outside of schoolteachers and full-time professors -- get the summer off. Most people work year round, with a week or two of vacation annually. Most of them don't make significantly different salaries or have any more job security than adjuncts.

I get reminded of this every so often by a certain look I get from my spouse. She comes home from working a standard 8-to-5 corporate job -- weekends off, two weeks of vacation a year -- and doesn't have much sympathy for me even if I've taught all summer. I get it. Believe me, I get it.

Why? Because even working all summer, I have more breaks than most people working a full-time job outside of academe. Every college has breaks between terms ranging from a few days to several weeks. Granted, we have some work to do during those breaks. But we usually don't have to show up anywhere to teach, so we can do the prep work for the next term "off site" -- say, at home in pajamas or on a nearby beach, on our own time.

Even my most excruciating year-round schedule afforded me two weeks off in May, two weeks off in August, and three weeks in January/December -- all of it unpaid, of course.

I'm pointing this out not to say we have nothing to gripe about (like the unpaid part) but to suggest that we put our complaints into perspective. The millions of other people who go to work every day in this country without tenure and without summers off seem to be managing, so maybe we can, too.

With this perspective, you can now plan. Careful planning will help you catch a true break during those days or weeks off between terms. To minimize the amount of work you have to do during breaks -- and ensure that the break is a real one -- get your academic calendars out now and plot out the days you have off between when your final grades are due for one term and classes start for the next. Dedicate as few days as possible of that time to getting your work done for the next semester. If you can get your syllabuses written, your book orders confirmed, and your first day of class lectures ready in two days, then do it, and leave the rest of those precious vacation days for yourself. Put your work on the shelf and take a break.

Truly walking away from the job for even a few days often does more for us than taking it with us on vacation for twice the time. In the latter case, you never really get away from it. There it is, in your suitcase or backpack, waiting for you to work on it. So, if you can do it, push yourself to get it all done -- work extra hours even -- and then leave.

Or, do the reverse, which is what I actually do. Turn in your final grades and clear your workspace of everything related to the old term. Confirm your book orders for the following term, then forget about everything. Take a break until a few days before the first day of classes. Then hit the books.

With limited time before school starts, you force yourself to get the work done efficiently. I'm doing that right now as I write this column. I finished my summer teaching and other work in mid-July and have devoted the rest of my summer to "time off" until August 21, which is 4 days before fall classes start. I figure I can write my syllabi and get my first lectures ready in that time period, since these aren't new classes for me. So, no need to even think about it now.

Since, as an adjunct, you probably teach the exact same classes over and over again, you don't have to do very much to get ready for the first day of class. You can refresh your notes or reread texts as the semester unfolds.

If you have to read a new text or revisit an old one during vacation, then fine, read it. But read it while lounging at the beach or drinking something with an umbrella in it. You'll look like a geek reading Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War or some God-awful mathematics book while everyone else reads magazines and romance novels, but you've been a geek for a long time. You should be used to it by now.