The world, however, is small and the wounds of this job misery are still fresh. Take, if you will, my recent excursion to the grocery store. I get stuck in line with an older gentleman who begins to chat me up. I mention that I adjunct at the local JC, and he says, "Me too!" We talk more. I mention the promise of the class size/classes to be taught. He laughs out loud and slaps his knee, "In the ten years I taught there, I never had a class larger than X." I also discover that Old Chair screwed him with promises of number of classes/student enrollment, and eventually edged him out of his position for her younger (and less qualified) friend in the department. Apparently Old Chair was systemic in the lying/deceiving department.
As I am "new faculty," I am required to be evaluated repeatedly over the term. I am told these special forms will be in my box. I go to the mail room. I have no box. I hunt down the person who emailed me regarding the whole "pick it up in your mail box." Person asks, "What, you don't have a box?" I couldn't hide my feelings of contempt, rejection, and abuse. I snapped back, practically at a hiss, "No. I do not have a box with my name on it." I get the paperwork from yet another person. I found out about this stupid paperwork mid-week when I already had a full week of class planned ..... let's just say I decided to say "fuck it" and leave the completion of this paperwork until the absolute last day it was due. If this place can't treat me like a colleague and a professional, then I refuse to extend them that courtesy.
My students fail homework exams. We're talking questions pulled word for word from the homework. I don't know what to do to fix it. I mean, I've watered down the content to the point where I wouldn't give it exchange credit at a four year university. (Although I now understand my community college transfers at Old Job who said they got As in my subject and don't understand why they're failing at the four year.) If I don't water down the content/expectations, then NO ONE in this class will pass, and I will guarantee unemployment at the end of this term. I feel dirty. I feel like I am failing my profession. I feel like I am not maintaining high standards. I feel like an utter fraud. This is not a university class, and it's only slightly above a high school class. I am not holding college-level expectations of my students at this point.
With apologizes, to Shakespeare:
O Yaro, Yaro! Wherefore art thou Yaro?
Deny thy retirement, and refuse thy garden;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my guide,
And I'll no longer be miserable.
Your experience is common, I think. During my juco career, all of this occurred, and what was especially trying for me was the feeling that I was part of a fraud that we all happily perpetrated on a disinterested and disenfranchised student body.
ReplyDeleteAt one of the places where I used to adjunct, I not only didn't have a box, but they didn't have boxes, period. I asked someone what the department did with its incoming mail and she said "oh, we just toss it in this pile."
ReplyDeleteI am not surprised, in the least. I, too, experienced this at the last juco where I adjuncted. When I tried to 'push' students to at least make assignments interesting or challenging (in the hopes that then that might engage them), I was told that I was doing too much to make them think and to conform to the curriculum that others were teaching (i.e. worksheets with fill-in-the-blanks missing words that I hadn't seen since the fifth grade). Very disheartening.
ReplyDeleteYou know what wasn't disheartening? My pay check. I earned more part time there than I do full time here. No benefits, but still... it paid great! I hope that your move is at least worth the dread of having to go to work and navigate a new environment.
I'm at a CC and sometimes I have the opposite feeling- that I am a martyr and an idiot for working way too hard. Some of my colleagues (not all) seem to water it all down, give out extra credit like Halloween candy, and have exams my cat could pass. Of course the shiny reward they get (in addition to their salary) is ZERO student complaints and almost no student behavioral problems. I'm tired of grading extra papers and dealing with students who bitch because "she asks questions from the textbook that we didn't go over in class." Sometimes I feel like such a fool for working so hard whenit seems like less would suffice. It is a Martyr-Fraud Complex of sorts.
ReplyDeleteWhat is "Shakespeare"?
ReplyDeleteIs that going to be on the test?