Monday, March 30, 2015

The Day I Helped and It Didn't...

According to two sources I've seen so far (the CCCC review of how adjuncts should get out of their crisis and today's article in the Chron), the answer to the problem of higher ed's reliance on adjunct labor is for the adjuncts to take on more responsibility for their low pay.  If we were to do more work, the argument goes, we would receive recognition from our "colleagues" and our condition would improve.

I took them up on this.

The other day, a Ph.D. candidate asked me if I would look at an essay he'd been sending out for publication and give him some feedback.

It was a fine article, but it had no literature review to speak of.  Moreover, as the article was right in my wheelhouse, I was able to immediately note the three books he hadn't read and which experts peer reviewers would expect him to have read in order for him to publish in that particular subfield.  I made copious notes on the document and gave it back to the guy.

A few points:  first, the article had gone out four times without a literature review.  Second, it had gone out under supervision.  In other words, somebody had advised the guy that the article was ready to go out despite its not having a literature review.  Third, the texts that were cited were obscure precisely because they were required reading for a graduate level class that, let me be blunt, must have been behind the times if those were the books assigned.

When I found the student to give back his paper, he was in a meeting with a professor (I think the professor who was guiding him through the paper).  I pardoned the interruption, handed the student the paper, and walked off...having become a substantial part of the inner workings of my department, particularly in my volunteering to aid a graduate student.  You will admit, becoming a mentor to a graduate student is outside my responsibilities as an adjunct.  I took on the extra workload, now for that respect I'd heard so much about!

So, that professor will no longer look me in the face.  He walks by me without acknowledging my presence.  Do you know why?  Because my input on his student in his program is not appreciated.  Those are their graduate students, and its a problem when an adjunct walk in and tell them how to succeed where their mentor professors have been unable to offer useful advice. And there I am saying, "this will never get published without a literature review.  Why don't you have a literature review?"  The professor is just not going to be happy when he learns that the adjunct down the hall is giving better advice to the grad students than he is.

Seriously, no literature review.  Sent out and rejected four times.

Having said that, I think that professor is, essentially, right.  It's his department, not mine.  It's not my place to tell the Ph.D. candidates how it's done.  They let the student refer to himself as ABD.  He isn't.  He's in coursework.  But ABD sounds impressive and since no one challenges him, it lets him think he's almost there.  I explained to him that he wasn't ABD and he looked at me incredulously.  Who am I to expose that--to send him back to his professor saying "but the adjunct says I'm not ABD, why'd you guys let me go around telling people I'm ABD?"  I mean they shouldn't, but at the same time, if they do, I'm not helping the situation any.  Who am I to critique the reading list of the graduate level class that teaches the student the "cutting edge" of scholarship in that field.

And while I'm on the subject, who am I to explain that the path through the major is counterproductive or that an elective slot is pretty much occupied semester after semester by the same class taught in the same way by the same professor?  It's not my department.  I'm an adjunct.  And if I don't understand that, I will be reminded the second I try to shape departmental policy.  I simply don't have a stake in it, and that makes all the difference, not just in what I might be willing to do to help, but also in how that help is going to be received and interpreted.

It is ridiculous to assume that we can just step in and start acting like faculty in our current position.  First off, this idea of "becoming involved" makes it seem like those of us who aren't making any money are just not working hard enough.  Why, we should be on committees too.  Second , it assumes that the opportunity to become vibrant developers of our department's curriculum is available to us, when the reality is, our input is often not only unappreciated, but counterproductive to the department's mission.  We are hired to teach our class and to go away.  Sticking around to do more won't earn respect.  It will make us look either bossy or pathetic.

I would love to have graduate students under my belt.  Seriously, I would.  I would love to talk to the other people teaching in my discipline and have arguments on why we should be pushing certain authors and theorists over others.  But none of that happens when we are not equals.  I'm just the guy who thinks that the professor in charge of my field is a decade behind the times.  That's not fair.  I can't help him.  He can't correct me.  I can't really help his students.  Given the situation as it stands now, it's better, not just for me, but for everyone involved if I just teach my thing and go.

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