Downward mobility

So, after waiting the entire day for the heater guy to show, and then being told, and I quote, "there's nothing [he] can do," we managed to fix the heat situation ourselves, by putting on our detective caps and figuring out where the pipes froze (duh!) and then attacking it with a hair dryer, which did the trick in a matter of minutes.

But that's not what I want to write about today. Today's post is about my very first taste of what it feels like to be an "adjunct" as opposed to a tenure-track professor. And let me tell you, it does not taste very good.

Today I met with the English department chair the college that currently employs my husband (a college which as a rule does not do spousal hires), hoping to have a conversation about my quite extensive experience as a teacher and scholar, and whether I might fill a niche in the department and do some part-time teaching there. Instead, we skipped the conversation part as he very quickly offered me two courses for the fall, one being composition and the other in a subject that I actually find interesting (a course he presented as "a great opportunity for me"), for a total salary of $5,000 for the semester. He did not ask me any questions about what I've taught in the past, what my research is in, what I'm working on now--nothing, in other words, about who I am as a scholar, but was interested only in my understanding that he could give me only one or two courses a semester (if that), and pay me $2,500 a course.

Now, it's not as if I didn't expect this. My husband was an adjunct back home, and I have long been aware of the generally sucky conditions of adjunct work. I went into this meeting fully expecting to be offered precisely the kind of thing I was offered (though perhaps for more pay). But it wasn't until I actually experienced being treated like an adjunct--like someone, when it comes down to it, who is only useful if she can fill the scheduling gaps at the last minute--that the indignity of it has hit me full force.

And my feeling is, while I might enjoy teaching a course here and there on a subject that interests me, there's no way I'm going to become the PhD-on-call who teaches whatever needs teaching.

Academia is a very hierarchical place, and it sucks to back near the bottom of the totem pole. I'm just saying.