Today, I made my ten-minute walk to the train (which took more like twenty because of the lazy motherfuckers who refuse to shovel and/or salt their walks), to one of my three jobs, with five hours of sleep from the night before (due to paper grading), twenty-five pounds of books and papers on my back, and a fever of 101, because for lowly adjuncts like myself, there are no "sick days," only "don't-get-paid-days."
Several of my students, noticing my flushed complexion, flu-textured voice, my fist full of Kleenex, asked if I was "sick."
"I'm feeling a little under the weather, but I'm fine," I assured them. But I'm not fine.
I wanted to tell them how I cried that morning in the shower because my body was simultaneously hot and cold and all I wanted to do was sleep but somebody has to pay the rent and it's certainly not going to be the cat; I wanted to tell them I stayed up until well after one a.m. the night before, grading their papers – something I am expected to do, but do not get paid for – and that only two of the fifteen of them had written thesis statements that were even remotely defensible, even though we'd spent the last three weeks going over and over and over thesis statements and when I begged them to ask questions, if they had any, no one raised a goddamn hand to admit how truly clueless they were.
I wanted to tell them that most Saturday nights, while they are doing-whatever-the-hell-horrific thing kids their age do, content with their C-averages, I am sitting in an apartment I can barely afford, slavishly correcting their grammar.
I wanted to tell them that I have Norma-Rae-style fantasies of staging a massive adjunct walkout two weeks before finals but it's never gonna happen because there is a vast herd of fools with terminal degrees and delusions lining up to have my shitty job.
I wanted to tell them that nowadays, most universities and colleges would rather hire adjuncts than full-time faculty because ten adjuncts cost any college or university far less than one full-time faculty member. I wanted to tell them what a sweatshop academia had become.
I wanted to tell them about some of the arrogant full-time faculty pricks I've met who couldn't teach their way out of a paper bag, but thanks to their dissertation on some bullshit like the migratory habits of aggressive butterflies, they were given an office, and health insurance, and vacation time.
I wanted to tell them that now, on account of my advanced degree and the past two years spent teaching them, I am both over-qualified and bizarrely unqualified for just about any job they could imagine. Am I sick? Yes. I'm sick. Sick and bitter. Exploitation will do that to you, kids.
submitted by a.g.
