March 12: Hunters of Whales, Contingent Faculty, Summers Off

As Queequeg and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling; and as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among landsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I am all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby done to us hunters of whales.

In the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish the fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not accounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a stranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society, it would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were he presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation of the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale Fishery) to his visting card, such a procedure would be deemed preeminently presuming and ridiculous.

Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies' plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier's profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale's vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!

And here is the start of Ishmael's defense of the occupation of whaling.  Now, these days, whaling is pretty much an extinct profession, unnecessary even.  The human race has found replacements for the commodities that used to be supplied by whaling ships.  Thus, whaling in the modern world is viewed as bloody, barbaric, and harmful--a viewpoint that Ishmael is trying to dispel.

It doesn't help that so many whales have been hunted to the point of near extinction.  The sperm whale itself, while on the endangered species list, is one of the more abundant whales on the planet.  Estimates range from two hundred thousand to 1.5 million living sperm whales in the world's oceans.  That's a lot of blubber.  But I would venture a guess that if I went to a party, and Ishmael walked in and started waxing eloquent on the whaling profession, he would probably be laughed at, shunned, or attacked.

I frequently face the same problem when I mention that I teach at a university.  Never mind that I'm contingent faculty.  The prevailing belief is that, if you teach on the college level, you are wealthy and have a great deal of leisure time to write and travel and stock your wine cellar (because all university professors are into wines).  Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth in my case.

Thanks to the current powers-that-be in Washington, D. C., public school teachers somehow fall under this same false umbrella of privileged suspicion.  I can't tell you how many times I've been a part of a conversation that goes something like this:

"So what does Tom do for a living?"

"Oh, he teaches seventh grade science."

"Well, he's all set then."

"No, he really underpaid."

"Yeah, but he gets his summers off."

Teachers have to do continuing education.  It's a requirement to maintain their teaching credentials.  They usually do this during the summer months.  There's new curriculum to plan.  Classrooms to organize.  Training to participate in.  If I don't teach in the summer, I'm preparing for the classes I will teach come August.  Selecting textbooks.  Writing syllabuses.  Creating Web content.  I'm always teaching, even when I'm not.

So, don't ever think that teachers have it easy.  They're not in it for the money.  Or prestige.  Or summer vacation.  Teachers are dedicated public servants who deserve respect and thanks.  More money wouldn't be bad, either.

Saint Marty is thankful for all the teachers he's ever known in his life.

November 1: Echolalia, Contingent Faculty, Why I Teach

It was difficult for Rumfoord to take Billy seriously, since Rumfoord had so long considered Billy a repulsive non-person who would be much better off dead.  Now, with Billy speaking clearly and to the point, Rumfoord's ears wanted to treat the words as a foreign language that was not worth learning.  "What did he say?" said Rumfoord.

Lily had to serve as an interpreter.  "He said he was there," she explained.

"He was where?"

"I don't know," said Lily.  "Where were you?" she asked Billy.

"Dresden," said Billy.

"Dresden," Lily told Rumfoord.  

"He's simply echoing things we say," said Rumfoord.

"Oh," said Lily.

"He's got echolalia now."

"Oh."

Rumfoord continues to dismiss Billy, even though Billy is speaking clearly and answering questions correctly.  Rumfoord, again, doesn't want to be proven wrong, about Billy or Dresden.  Therefore, in his mind, Rumfoord turns Billy into a human tape recorder--repeating words and phrases that are said to him.  And Billy becomes non-human again.

I know a thing or two about being dismissed.  Having worked as an adjunct and contingent professor in an English Department at a university for over two decades, I have gotten quite used to being a non-entity.  I'm viewed by a lot of my colleagues as "part-time" and "temporary."  That is a commonly held belief among tenured faculty and department heads.  Of course, the fact that I have been teaching in the English Department now longer than most of the tenured professors sort of negates that assertion.

Another commonly held belief by tenured faculty is that contingents have no investment in the future of the university or the community, as a whole.  My counterargument:  I chose to stay in this area and raise my family.  I choose every semester to teach classes for less than half the salary of a full-time professor because I love being in the classroom and firmly believe in the mission of higher education.  I think that I'm making the world a better place, one student at a time.  That is why I teach.

Even graduate students seem to prescribe to the same attitudes as full-timers when it comes to contingent faculty.  I have encountered grad students who think they are smarter, more talented, and more entitled than contingents.  However, grad students are suffering from echolalia, parroting back the words, ideas, and actions of their tenured teachers.

So, you see, I am sort of like Billy Pilgrim in my position at the university.  And many of my colleagues come off as Rumfoord--dismissive and demeaning.

Tonight, Saint Marty is grateful for his students.

May 11: Function of Innocence, Locked Out of My Office, Glorified Fry Cooks

But it gets harder.  The courage of children and beasts is a function of innocence.  We let our bodies go the way of our fears.  A teen-aged boy, king of the world, will spend weeks in front of a mirror perfecting some difficult trick with a lighter, a muscle, a tennis ball, a coin.  Why do we lose interest in physical mastery?  If I feel like turning cartwheels--and I do--why don't I learn to turn cartwheels, instead of regretting that I never learned as a child?  We could all be aerialists like squirrels, divers like seals, we could be purely patient, perfectly fleet, walking on our hands even, if our living or stature required it.  We can't even sit straight, or support our weary heads.

What Dillard is talking about here is the loss of innocence.  Children think they can do anything.  Turn cartwheels.  Walk on their hands on a tightrope stretched across the Grand Canyon.  Anything is possible.  Mortality and disappointment do not even enter the picture.  It's all about faith and belief.  That's why children can believe in a giant rabbit hopping all over the world, delivering baskets of chocolate.  Believing is seeing.  Ask the disciple Thomas about that little lesson.

I used to be a person that was full of optimism.  I have taught at the university for close to 25 years as a contingent.  In all that time, I always harbored, in the back of my mind, the belief that one day I would be offered a full-time position.  Call me innocent or naive or just plain stupid.  I like to think that the universe operates fairly, rewarding hard work and talent.  That's how things should work.

Tonight, when I tried to use my badge to gain access to the building which houses my university office, I discovered that my badge had been deactivated for some reason.  I have never had this happen before.  I have always been able to get into my office after hours.  I mean, it's my office, for God's sake.  I can only assume that the university administration is trying another tactic to erode the confidence of contingent faculty.  Some of my contingent colleagues have lost their university e-mails, been kicked out of their offices.

I try not to publicly criticize the university for which I teach.  I wholeheartedly believe in the mission of higher education.  It's a noble profession.  An investment in the future.  That is what I have always believed.  However, the university president, vice presidents, department heads all have a different vision of academia:  higher education as big business, students as consumers, and contingent faculty as glorified fry cooks.

I am sitting in my university office at the moment because some colleague saw me trying to get into the building and opened the door for me.  I'm a little pissed, and it takes a lot to piss me off even a little.  In the past two years, I have lost two siblings and been kicked out of one job that I held for 17 years.  Now, I'm not even trustworthy enough to have access to my own office after the university closes for the night.  I may do something dangerously contingent like work on a syllabus or read a novel.

No matter how much I want to believe in a just and fair universe, I am still locked out of my office building.  The university administration and department heads still think of me as "temporary" after nearly a quarter decade of teaching.  And nothing is going to change until a meteor strikes the planet and causes the extinction of all the tenured dinosaurs.

Saint Marty just had to get that off his chest.

July 21: Hard Work, Honorable Mention, Siv Cedering, "A Raccoon"

She [Annie Ives] gave a talk about what hard work would get someone, and the kids either responded by clapping or they shouted insults, the most common being, "Oh yea, if education is so good for you, then what are you doing here?"  Because to some of them being there was the worst thing in the world.  And sometimes the kids laughed at her and cursed, or they stared at her blankly and she'd realized that many of them did not speak or understand English.

Annie Ives is an idealist, at least at this point in her life, before her son is murdered.  She still believes that she can make a difference in the world.  That's why she substitute teaches high school English for inner-city schools in New York.  She wants the kids to understand that there is something better for them.  Something that can be attained through hard work and perseverance.

It has been a long day.  Work kind of sucked, and now I'm sitting in my office at the university, typing this blog post.  When I checked my e-mail, I found a message from the nature writing contest I entered earlier this summer.  It seems I received honorable mention.  That means I came in third.

I'm happy that I placed, but I could have really used that prize money right now.  I knew that the essay wasn't my best work, so I'm not surprised at the outcome of the contest.  Yet, I'm still disappointed.  Tonight, I think that I would fall into the group of students who curse and laugh at Annie Ives when she talks about hard work being the key to success.  I've been working hard all my life--two jobs, blogging, parenting, writing--and I don't seem to be climbing any ladder of professional happiness.  Still on the bottom rung, one step away from "starting over" or "giving up completely."

Sorry, I'm feeling a little sorry for myself this evening.  I didn't sleep well last night, and I had to deal with a lot of difficult people in the medical office today.  In about a half hour, I'm going to be at a meeting of the contingent faculty at the university.  I don't think that I'm going to receive any news of monumental importance.  What I'm looking forward to:  the food and the alcohol.

So, to sum up Saint Marty's day:  crabby patients at work, third place in a writing contest, and shrimp quesadillas with Mike's Hard Lemonade for dinner.

And the Poet of the Week with roadkill. 

A Raccoon

by:  Siv Cedering

A raccoon lies broken
On the broken lines of a road.
Like the car that killed it.

I speed by.  I have seen the pain
In the small and pointed face
And blinked at the pink entrails

That trail from its belly.
But it is the paw that makes me
Stare.  What is there that makes the paw

Reach up? and the five fingers
At the end of the reach, bend
Like a hand?  They say

That animals are our innocence,
What we were before Eden
And the Fall.  Though I cannot

Understand it all, I stay on my side
Of the broken line that divides
The going from the coming.

How about a raccoon quesadilla?

June 6: Gloucester, Twelve On, Twelve Off, a Piece of My Mind

...Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts.  She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was going to South America with my grandmother...

These are the kind of people Holden is used to being around.  People with summer homes in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on the beach.  People who play tennis on their private tennis courts.  People who actually do go on trips to South America with their grandmothers.  These aren't just successful people.  These are wealthy people.  The Caulfields have money.

You may be wondering what's on my mind today.  Well, I'll tell you:  money, and my lack of it.  I just flipped through my copy of The Catcher in the Rye and read about Holden's private schools and lawyer father who produces Broadway shows and Hollywood writer brother.  I have nothing in common with these characters at all.

It's summer now.  While my colleagues at the university at teaching summer courses, I'm basically working twelve hour shifts at my medical office job.  Twelve on.  Twelve off.  Twelve on.  Twelve off.  Sometimes I'm so tired when I get to my car at the end of the day that I'm not sure whether I'm done with a twelve or starting a twelve.  This schedule is by choice and necessity.  Without the income from teaching at the university during the summer months, I choose to work these hours in order to not go into foreclosure on my home.

My situation is not unusual.  My office mate at the university is also contingent faculty.  She has two kids like me, as well.  And she waitresses at Applebee's to pay the bills.  These are the choices people make in order to provide for their families.  Thus, summering in Gloucester is about as foreign-sounding as flying to Uranus.  If I were in Gloucester, I'd be working as a busboy or registering hotel guests.

The strange thing about people of means is that they don't realize they are people of means.  When I sit with a group of professors and they start complaining about how many empty rooms they have in their homes, I want to punch them in their throats.  I want to say, "Ooh, yeah.  I understand.  Just the other day, I was talking to my wife about converting one of our guest bedrooms into my second library.  What do you think?"  Puh-lease.

I'm sure I sound a little whiny at the moment.  I am.  I'm also jealous, angry, and exhausted.  If you give me a few more minutes, I'll probably come up with three more adjectives to describe the seven dwarfs of my fairy tale.  And I'm one of the lucky contingents.  I have a second job that provides health insurance for my household (for the moment).  My office mate doesn't.  She's one case of pneumonia away from eviction.

I'm not looking for pity or even sympathy.  I'm looking for a vacation from my twelve-hour-work-day life.  A nap, too.  I want a nap.  And maybe a glass of cheap wine and some chocolate.  Those are my goals for this summer.

Saint Marty has just given you a piece of his mind.

My house in the Hamptons....

May 30: Pencey Prep, Higher Education, 70 Percent, Piece of My Mind

What I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep.  Pencey Prep is this school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania.  You probably heard of it.  You've probably seen the ads anyway.  They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence.  Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time.  I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place.  And underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says:  "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men."  Strictly for the birds.  They don't do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school.  And I didn't know anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all.  Maybe two guys.  If that many,  And they probably came to Pencey that way.

Anybody familiar with The Catcher in the Rye knows about Holden's contempt for Pencey Prep and education, in general.  Holden has little patience for the teachers and students at Pencey.  Of course, his attitude has a lot to do with his deteriorating state of mind regarding life, in general.  Holden is depressed.  That's why he's flunking out of Pencey.  That's why he rides the train to New York.  That's why he checks into a hotel instead of going home.  He's at the end of his rope.

I have been a part of higher education for over half my life, as a student and teacher.  I've taught more than a few Holdens during my university career.  Kids who have no interest in learning at all.  And that's alright.  It takes young people a long time to figure life out.  I know it took me a while.

I started out in computer science major as an undergraduate.  Eventually, I started accumulating degrees in English and creative writing.  Today, I have a Master's in fiction writing and an MFA in poetry.  And I have a part-time teaching position at the local university.  That's right.  All of my energy and time has qualified me to be the academic equivalent of a French fry cook a McDonald's.

I'm not complaining.  Much.  I've been very lucky with the university on many levels.  The Department Head is good to me, and I get to teach classes that I love.  Good Books.  Mythology.  Intro to Film.  However, I'm an instructor with a terminal college degree working part-time.  According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "...some 70 percent of college courses offered are now taught by adjuncts--part-timers who are paid a pittance and have no job security."  And, I will add, no health insurance.  That's a huge number.

Now, those professors privileged enough to be tenured or tenure-track would respond, "Well, go out on the job market and get a tenure-track position at a university."  They know full well the chances of doing that are about as likely as capturing a leprechaun and shaking a pot of gold out of him.  And the tenured response to that statement would be, "Well, then go into another profession.  Find another career."  (I'm not kidding.  I heard one of my tenured colleagues say this.  Out loud.  In a department meeting.)

At my university, the contingent and adjunct faculty are now part of the professors' union.  That doesn't mean the full-timers are throwing us welcome parties.  No.  It means we have a little bit of protection, and the full-timers are nervous as cats.  Perhaps they see our inclusion as the first death rattle of the tenure system.  I don't know.  However, they feel threatened.

And maybe they should.  Instead of trying to make the part-timers' situations more secure and equitable, they have enforced a system of academic slave labor.  Maybe they deserve to feel like Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

That's a piece of Saint Marty's mind.

Be it ever so crumble, there's nothing like tenure

April 25: Academic Chasm

The last couple days have been difficult.  I can point to no specific cause for this impression.  Nothing particularly stressful has happened.  In fact, my stress is sort of winding down.  The semester is drawing to a close.  My students are taking their finals this week.  All I have left is grading.  However, there is much internal brouhaha between the faculty of the English Department at the university, and it sort of depresses me.

It all stems from what happened at the beginning of the fall semester.  In late August, contingent faculty members, for the first time in the history of the school, were included in collective bargaining with university administration for the new contract with the professors.  Since the contract was ratified, some members of the full-time tenured faculty have taken issue with the inclusion of contingent professors in departmental committees and meetings.  There has developed a definite "us" versus "them" mentality.

In some ways, it's based on class.  Some tenured professors see contingents as hired teaching hands, so to speak.  In their opinions, we don't really care about the English Department.  We simply care about ourselves and our needs.  Tenured faculty have nobler intentions.  They sacrifice their time and talent for the good of the department and university.  They do community service.  They write books and attend conferences.  They are full-timers.

Yes, it's a ridiculous argument.  I have been teaching for the university longer than a good portion of the tenured faculty.  Heck, I can remember when a good portion of them were hired by the English Department.  For close to 17 years, I have worked proudly alongside these people.  I consider them my colleagues and friends.  I also write and publish.  Every year, I teach poetry to elementary school students as a representative of the English Department.  I participate in food drives and benefit concerts.  I conduct community-based writing workshops.

The kind of disrespect being voiced now by some tenured faculty members is, to say the least, greatly disappointing.  It smacks of the kind of elitism I never thought I'd see at my institution.  Yet, it exists.  And it's ugly.

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to attend a department meeting that will focus on this academic chasm between full-time and contingent faculty.  It promises to be fairly heated.  I'm going because I care about contingents and full-time professors.  I care about the English Department and the university.  And I care about the students.  Am I angry?  Am I offended?  Am I sad?  Guilty on all counts.

It all boils down to the fact that every person (full-time or contingent) is worried.  Change is on the way, and change scares people.  It scares the hell out of me.  But the answer to this fear is not to cannibalize each other.  It's to accept each other.  Respect each other.  And help each other.

That's how Saint Marty sees it.

It's not my fault that people are threatened by me, is it?

May 9: Being an Adjunct, Saint Pachomius, Instructor Bridesmaid

I'm currently reading a really interesting book about teaching as an adjunct professor in higher education.  In the Basement of the Ivory Tower was written by Professor X.  The man doesn't want to identify himself.  He fears embarrassing his students and the institutions at which he teaches.  But Professor X is exposing the underbelly of colleges and universities.  Discussing full-time, tenure-track professors, he writes, "[a]ccording to a report by the American Federation of Teachers, only 27.9 percent of faculty fit this description in 2007, a decline from 33.1 percent in 1997.  In community colleges, only 17.5 percent are full-time tenured or on the tenure track."  That means that I'm a member of the majority teacher class (72.1 percent) in institutions of higher learning.  That doesn't give adjuncts any more respect, however.  In fact, the Modern Language Association judges the quality of a school by this gauge:  "the fewer the adjuncts on the job, the better."

Buy this book!  Hug your adjunct!

I really shouldn't read this book.  I find it both enlightening and depressing at the same time.  I've known for some time that I'm basically on the lowest rung of the academic ladder.  For the last few years, the adjuncts at my institution have been trying to unionize.  The full-time professors have voted to accept us into their union by a very slim margin.  However, the e-mail debate preceding the vote was heated, nasty, and incredibly self-centered.  I understand where the full-timers are coming from.  They're an endangered species, and they're trying to protect their turf.  I would probably be doing the same thing, if I were in their privileged position.  I am not, however.

One of the things I have learned from Professor X's book is that I probably don't stand a chance of ever being hired full-time by my university.  Because I am basically gum on the soles of professorial shoes, scraping that gum off and giving it a full-time job with benefits, private office, and retirement is not very likely.  I have known this fact for a while in the back of my mind.  I mean, as the old saying goes, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free (or next-to-nothing)?  The only chance I probably have of ever being hired by my department is if I win the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, or the Nobel Prize.  Therefore, I will always be Instructor Bridesmaid, never Professor Bride.

I am not bitter about this fact.  Much.  I think I realized the truth of my situation a long time ago.  I just prefer to live in a state of intellectual denial.

In a lot of ways, my professional situation is a lot like the situation of Pachomius, today's feast saint.  Pachomius was born at the end of the third century in Egypt.  What he did that nobody had done before is "organize hermits into groups and write down a Rule for them."  Pachomius was the founder of Christian monasticism, although the credit is usually given to Saint Anthony (I don't know why).  Even Basil and Benedict, the most famous Christian monastics, based their rules on Pachomius' Rule.  But Pachomius is not a household name.  When you go to kindergartens, there aren't a lot of little Pachomiuses running around.  Basically, Pachomius is an adjunct saint, acknowledged only grudgingly by the full-time, big-name saints.

Professor X is still teaching.  Like most contingent faculty (that's the more politically correct term for adjunct), he needs the money and, also, believes what he does in the classroom actually makes a difference.  Which is also something that sets adjuncts apart from many full-timers.

Professor X, Pachomius, and Saint Marty--adjuncts for life and beyond.