Ignorance is Bliss! ;-)

I just renewed my parking permit for U#2.

I need to park there (after my 76 mile long trip), there's no way around it. I just didn't know how much I was paying to park. Until now, that is.

When I started teaching there I simply drove to the parking office on one of the days of my hectic orientation (I was 2 days late to the week-long orientation meetings because I was returning from Brazil) and signed up for payroll deduction.

Last year parking services sent me an email about the renewal and I didn't even click on the attached form, I just replied saying I wanted to renew via payroll deduction (they gave that option in the email).

So... when I opened the PDF form a few minutes ago and saw that I need to pay $538 dollars to park I was pretty shocked/bummed. I know I've been paying a similar amount for two years (last year it was 516, though, I finally opened that PDF), but still, it's quite a bit of money!

Add to that the monthly cost of gas and that explains a bit why my seemingly respectable wages don't go very far! :-(

And now, every morning when I park I will be thinking of how much I have to pay to do that... sigh... it's just how my silly brain works. "Paying to work" doesn't seem very fair to me. In fact, the article about adjuncts I linked to earlier today mentions something about contingent laborers like myself "subsidizing their students' education*" by providing more labor than we're compensated for (writing rec. letters, going to meetings, etc).

The quote is actually not related to adjuncts' expenses incurred because of teaching, but it still made me think about the costs I have to literally pay to do my job. Sigh...

Well, now I can answer my colleagues when they ask me how much I pay for parking -- as they recently did and I didn't have an answer. I fully enjoyed my ignorance while it lasted, that's for sure!

* full quote:

“Students aren’t getting what they pay for or, if they are, it is because adjuncts themselves are subsidizing their education,” Maria Maisto, president of the adjunct activist group New Faculty Majority, told me. “Adjuncts are donating their time; they are providing it out of pocket."

From Elizabeth Segram's "The Adjunct Revolt: How Poor Professors Are Fighting Back." The Atlantic, 04/28/14