Frequently when I sit in my office at the university, I find myself staring out the window that my desk faces. At this time of the year, the window's streaked with dirt and sand, and in the afternoon, the heat from the sunlight bears down on me through the glass. The view from the window is not spectacular. It looks out on the faculty parking lot on the side of the building. Above the lot is a grassy hill that leads up to the street. In the winter, kids sled this hill daily. The slope is free of trees, and the incline is steep enough to make most sledders scream as they sail toward the bottom.
Most of the time when I look out the window, however, all I see are college students walking to or from campus. I've been in this office for a couple of years. As an Adjunct Associate English Professor, I rank pretty low on the faculty pecking order. If a full-time professor needed a place to store his collection of ancient Peruvian belly button lint, I'd probably be given office space in the closest toilet stall tomorrow. I enjoy my current digs a great deal because I am pretty far off the beaten path and only people who are absolutely desperate to see me show up at my door. In fact, I'm convinced that the reason I have been able to retain my office for this long is that I have been forgotten. I prefer the anonymity to unemployment.
This is not to say that I wouldn't jump at the chance to join the ranks of full-time professorship. I would sacrifice my window, my office, and my isolation for the opportunity, but the chances of that happening are about as likely as Stephen King winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. Translation: not an icicle's chance in Hades. So, I will enjoy my window seat until my inevitable next move, whenever that may be.
Students do not understand the precarious situation I'm in. That's because most college students still labor under the delusion that degree equals stable, well-paying job. A person with multiple degrees, like myself, therefore, must be indispensable to the entire establishment of higher education. They do not realize that the fry cook at McDonald's probably has a Ph.D. in Comparative Incan Poetry. To most students, I represent a combination of scholar, therapist, surrogate parent, and confessor. Unless, of course, the student is failing, and then I am an asshole, fuckhead, moron, monkey-ball licker.
I don't mind fulfilling any of these roles (except the monkey ball thing). In fact, I feel priveleged when a student opens up about a problem he or she is having. To me, that signifies a degree of trust I try to establish with all of those under my tutelage. I don't teach math where the answers are a easy as solving x + y = 4logz. (It's been years since I've taken trigonometry, so please don't try to test my mathematical prowess.) My point is that English is not a cut-and-dry science or discipline. There is always some degree of subjectivity and interpretation in English courses, and, therefore, students feel slightly more at ease with me, I think. When personal problems arise, I am sometimes the person to whom he or she turns.
A couple of years ago, I had a guy in a composition course I was teaching, and he was very clearly struggling with some issues. Some days, he would come to class, put his head down on his desk, and barely respond when I asked him a question. Other days, I couldn't get him to shut up. He was loud, interrupted my lectures, and made inappropriate comments as other students read their writings aloud. After a couple of weeks, I had come to the conclusion that he was either doing drugs or unmedicated and bipolar.
One day, I got an e-mail from him saying that he had to miss class. He'd been in the hospital all weekend and still wasn't doing well. When he showed up later in the week, he had bandages on his forearms.
That day, I was teaching an essay by Wendell Berry, who is a poet and avid environmentalist/conservationist. As a preface to our class discussion, I had the students write a journal entry on a subject they felt passionate about. I decided to write about my wife. I wrote about the day she ended up in the hospital after cutting herself. (Yes, I had my troubled student in mind.) After I read my journal entry to the class, I spoke about the stigma surrounding mental illness and how even family members can sometimes treat a mentally ill person like a two-headed Guernsey cow. "It's scary," I finished. "I know."
Louise de Marillac would have been all over this situation. Born in 1591, she dedicated most of her life to "corporal and spiritual service of the poor in their homes." Under the tutelage of Vincent de Paul (yes, he of thrift store fame), Louise founded an order of nuns called Daughters of Charity, Servants of the Sick Poor. Unlike me, who prefers isolation and anonymity, Louise sought out people who were suffering and made their lives better. That's why she's the Patroness of Social Workers, and I'm an adjunct instructor in a borrowed office.
After class was over, my student lingered until everyone else had left the room. He approached me and said quietly, "I really liked what you wrote and said."
I looked at him, at the bandages on his arms. "How are you doing?" I said.
He shrugged. He was a big guy who struck me as a person who was more comfortable talking about beer than emotional well-being.
I nodded. "Well, you know you can talk to me if you need help." I hoisted my book bag onto my shoulder. "My office door is always open."
If they haven't moved me, I added in my head.
He stared down at his feet. "I hurt myself this weekend."
I didn't say anything, waiting for him to continue.
"That's why I was in the ER," he said.
We started walking out of the room.
"Are you getting help?" I said.
"I'm seeing doctors," he mumbled.
We walked in silence until we were outside.
"They're trying to kick me out of school," he said finally.
We walked a little further, and then I said, "You have to take care of yourself."
He stopped abruptly. "I gotta go," he said. He started walking away from me, saying over his shoulder, "I really liked what you wrote."
I never saw him again, never heard from him again. On my next roster, he had withdrawn from the class.
When I sit in my anonymous office now and stare out my anonymous window at anonymous students, I often think of that kid, walking away from me, alone. I wonder how many of the young men and women I see through me window are nursing unseen wounds, wounds they don't want to admit to or are ashamed of. They trudge up the hill by themselves. I hope they are heading home to someone who cares about them, who loves them. Someone who'll stand at the top of the hill and watch them sled down it, making sure they're safe when they reach the bottom.
