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.

September 17: James Thurber, Jealousy, Colleagues

In March 1927 a new writer came on board at The New Yorker, a tall and nearsighted, bespectacled and mustached thirty-two-year-old named James Thurber.  He had considerably more journalistic experience than Andy.  He had already worked as a newspaperman in his native Columbus, Ohio, as well as for the Chicago Tribune in Paris alongside other expatriates such as William Shirer.  Thurber was serious about his career as a writer, but like Andy [White] he couldn't remain solemn for more than an hour at work.  In Paris, Thurber liked to sneak in fictional filler paragraphs, including one quoting President Coolidge as having said to a religious convention that a man who does not pray is not a praying man.


E. B. White worked with great writers at The New Yorker, Thurber being one of them.  Despite Thurber's greater success and fame, White harbored no jealousy against his new colleague.  They shared an office.  White championed Thurber's cartoon work at the magazine's art meetings.  He thoroughly enjoyed his friend's humor and talent.

Any long time reader of this blog knows I have a small problem with jealousy.  It comes from years of watching people teach classes I wanted to teach.  Get jobs I wanted to get.  Write and get published books I wanted to write and get published.  Life in higher education is sometimes thrilling and challenging, and sometimes it's just plain challenging.  I have generally fallen on the challenging end of the spectrum.

I have friends and colleagues whose writing I truly admire.  They deserve all of the accolades and rewards their talent provides.  That doesn't mean my little, mean-spirited side remains silent.  No.  It whispers things in my ears like, "What the hell?  Who did he screw to get a MacArthur Genius Grant?" and "She can't teach poetry.  She can't even spell 'poetry.'"  It's my nasty secret.  Intense envy, bordering on sociopathic.

I'm sitting in my office at the moment, waiting to teach my Wednesday night Intro to Film class.  It has been a long day, starting at 4 a.m.  I just walked down a hallway of the English Department, reading the names of full-time, tenured professors on the office doors.  I've been teaching here longer than most of them.  In fact, I've been teaching here longer than the majority of the full-time English faculty.  That's a little depressing.  Sometimes I feel like the red-headed stepchild of this little academic family.

I'm not complaining, though.  Well, maybe I am a little.  I simply wish I would feel a little more accepted than I do.  Unfortunately, I carry the descriptor "contingent" in front of my academic title.  That marginalizes me in most professor's eyes.  I'm "temporary."  After 18 years, I could just leave because I'm not invested in the success of the university.  I'm only in it for myself.  I stick around for the (ahem!) huge salary and (gag!) incredible benefits.  Not to mention the (cough!) respect.

So, you'll excuse Saint Marty's attitude tonight.  He's just wondering when the MacArthur Foundation is going to recognize his genius.

I can spell "genius":  S-A-I-N-T  M-A-R-T-Y