... a job!? Even when it's not really a job?
If I had written this post a month ago it would definitely have had a more uplifting beginning.
I've been repeating this silly title in my head over and over again since the first week of classes. After a few weeks at home, sometimes not leaving the house, even, for three days at a time (this happened during the week the boys went back to school and K went to the university everyday but I stay home for various reasons...), I was just happy and relieved to go back to my adjunct teaching.
"A job is a job is a job!" I told myself cheerfully. I can get out of the house, I see people (not any people, but young college students), I do some (slightly) interesting things preparing to teach and I can feel happier.
This is all true, except that I'm constantly in conflict with myself. I walk to the bathroom upstairs and on the way back I see an open door and peek into the office of a full time staff member (not a tt professor in this case) and I think of the "office of my own" that I'm unlikely to ever have. I come back from class and see this other (part-time) faculty member across the hall, talking to a student, typing on her computer or eating her lunch. And I wonder who she is.
I feel so isolated! Sure, I interact with some of my office mates (those from Iraq) and I've even made friends with two women who teach Spanish, but mostly, I don't feel part of anything. Unlike the original "invisible adjunct" blogger (2003-04, ages ago), the dept. secretaries know me and are very friendly. Why do I have to feel so ambivalent about this?
And when I mention anything to K, he just asks me -- practical-minded man that he is -- "What do you want to do, then?" "Quit? Try something else?" That's not the point, I try to answer back weakly... but don't actually say anything. I know his take on this: blogland has poisoned me irreversibly and there's nothing that can be done to make me happy about this situation. Not that I'm exactly unhappy... it's just that I keep thinking it's unfair and that something needed to be done, but I know that things won't change. That's how the Ivory Tower works.
So... yeah... I have to stop now. Not only because it's past midnight and I really need to sleep, but also because this conversation is just old and boring. And I'm just an incorrigible whiner. Sigh. I will try not to write about these depressing things every week, OK?
Here's what I think. Adjunct, t-t, full-time instructor, whatever position you hold, I don't think most higher ed institutions give you that feeling of being a part of something. I actually hope someone chimes in to tell me I'm wrong. t-t faculty tend to feel more a part of their discipline than their institution. Disciplinary goals and institutional goals often conflict.
ReplyDeleteI have had one experience in a higher ed institution where I felt a part of something and that was in my second graduate institution. But even then, just as I was leaving, that feeling started to go. People I'd connected with left. Maybe that's part of what makes it hard for a university department, much less a university as a whole to generate a coherent feeling. People come and go so often. Sometimes there's not a core to hold it together.
While I can't say my current situation at a k-12 school is perfect, I already feel connected to the place. I have colleagues I like and respect. We're with each other all day. The students are great, too, and I feel a real sense of contributing to their development, even when I don't have them in class. And I think I was looking for that feeling of belonging, which I just wasn't getting at a college. I think there are lots of people who don't need that from their jobs, but a lot of people do.
Bom, eu não sei...mas quando quiser bater um papo, é só ligar...
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