First Person

Just Deserts

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By Jon T. Coleman

"I don't deserve this," I thought as I took in the sights of my new office: a beige metal desk, a brown filing cabinet, four wood bookshelves, two chairs, a computer table, and a window that not only opened, but framed a lovely pine tree.

Then the spirit of William Munny, Clint Eastwood's murderous gunslinger from the movie Unforgiven, entered the room and reminded me of the bedrock reality of my profession. "Deserve's," he whispered, "got nothin' to do with it."

For the past 12 years, first as a graduate student and then as an adjunct instructor, I labored as a free-range historian. I roamed campuses without a permanent office or phone, meeting students at the library or at a coffee house. Outside of scheduled conferences, I was a hard person to find, and I enjoyed the blessings of academic homelessness.

Offices bring visitors wanting advice, recommendations, and favors, and my wanderlust liberated me from those gobblers of time and energy as well as the accountability that comes when those in authority know where you are.

I finally got penned in my last semester as an adjunct. I sat in a cubicle from noon to three every Tuesday and Thursday listening to the fellow part-timers in nearby cells talk to students and each other. My pupils rarely showed up, and I couldn't blame them; the cubes were depressing.

The university had equipped each with a particle board computer desk, and over the years the tops sagged under the weight of the monitors. That gave the honeycomb a warped sadness. The desks mirrored the bowed spirits of the men and women who shouldered the institution's teaching load for little money and less respect.

Now, instead of a caged beast, I feel like a fabulously rich and beautiful debutante, and, like most fabulously rich and beautiful debutantes, I've been pondering the link between responsibility and privilege a great deal lately.

Ever since Paris Hilton besmirched the name of gorgeous trust funders everywhere with her sex tapes and reality TV appearances, I imagine that the parents of debutantes have sat their handsome offspring down (or, at the very least, had their legal representatives sit them down) for a talk about fortunes, answerability, and the value of choosing technologically inept lovers incapable of running the simplest audiovisual equipment. I can hear the opening words of the lecture -- "Of those to whom much is given, much is expected" -- and I agree with them.

I am both grateful and ever cognizant of my privileged position in academe: I have a tenure-track job, a good one with eager students, a light teaching load, regular sabbaticals, and stellar colleagues. But unlike most debutantes who can thank their robber-baron ancestors for their windfalls, I've been struggling to locate whom or what I am beholden to for my pleasant fortune.

Does my gratitude belong to my current employer for lifting me out of the particle-board world of adjunct servitude, or to the profession that finally accepted me as a junior member? What do I owe the casualties I left behind? Even more, what do I owe the graduate students I might help send out into such a dispiriting academic labor market?

I could accept full responsibility for my situation. I won this job against stiff competition. Surely, I deserved it more than others. Ego inflated to Michelin Man proportions, I could float through the years assured of the rightness of the world: Academe works because it works for me.

But I can't do that. My experiences on the job market ruined such comfortable delusions. I don't believe in meritorious competition anymore. An army of highly talented and qualified historians fights to enter the tenure-track ranks every year. I look at them and see myself.

There's so little difference between them and me that claiming superiority would be an exercise in silliness. Deserve's got nothing to do with receiving a faculty appointment at a modern university.

My office, however, disagrees with those sentiments. The window, bookshelves, and stout desk communicate prestige and authority. I don't want to exaggerate their effect. The space is far from grandiose. The dean's office in the next building, with its marble floors, dapper receptionist, and free mints, radiates power. My joint exudes the low-watt vibes of a junior scholar.

Still, the room contrasts sharply to the cubicle I inhabited last semester as an adjunct at a public university in Indiana. Then, some of my students actually laughed at me and my sagging box. "They put you here?" asked one with genuine concern for my self-esteem.

I will not get the same reaction this semester. Behold the magic of institutional backing! With the wave of a contract, a university can change the lowliest instructor into an assistant professor. The experience is fun and gratifying. I like telling people what I do and where I work. I enjoy having an office, and I look forward to crossing the poverty line.

There's only one glitch. I'm a bald 34-year-old man with two kids, a Weber grill, and a mortgage. Every so often, when I eat too many beans or shellfish, salt crystals form in the joint of my right big toe. I've never seen the fairy-tale rule book, but I'm pretty sure that any association with the term "gout" disqualifies you as a Cinderfella.

I am the same frog I've been for years. Yet my new title and accommodations are princely, and I don't quite know how to reconcile my current position with my swampy past. I worked hard to enter the castle. Now I'm in, at least provisionally, and I'm worried about the price of my fresh digs. Can you be a privileged member of the court and remain a slimy amphibian?

The view from my cubicle offered neither blue skies nor pine trees, but it did cast my profession in an honest light. All the tweedy grandeur of higher education looked pompous and irrelevant from there. Professors battled for distinction, raises, and victories over a host of enemies, ignoring the drooping faux wood that supported their prestige. They saw only the dark mahogany that lined the offices they thought they deserved. I want to remain a frog as long as I can. I'm afraid the price of ascending the academic ranks may be blindness.