Professor X Read Online Free PDF Page A

economic pressures of the academic marketplace. To most of higher education’s regular citizens, part-time instructors are an embarrassment.” 2 In the world of college, I was a screwball, a loser, a pretender, a scoundrel, and a scab.
    The literature is filled with stories of adjuncts pushed to the brink and going over the edge. Consider the tale of Mary Ann Swissler, a luckless Seton Hall adjunct, who fired off an illconsidered e-mail to her students and, in the words of the administration, “would not be returning”:
    After discovering that some of her students had used a public Web site to criticize her teaching abilities, her wardrobe, and other aspects of her appearance . . . Swissler said in her e-mail message to the students that such comments “confirmed to me what I had to keep to myself all semester: that most of you mental midgets are the most immature, sheltered, homophobic, sexist, racist, lying sacks of [excrement] I have ever met in my life.” She added, “Seton Hall may be kissing you’re [ sic ] asses now, but out here in the real world, brats like you will be eaten for breakfast.” 3
    The academic literature treats adjuncts with a mix of weary condescension and revulsion. Check out this headline from the Chronicle of Higher Education : “Keep Adjuncts Away from Intro Courses, Report Says,” as though the adjuncts had some manner of contagious disease. Adjuncts will almost never get selected for available full-time positions; to choose an adjunct is, to put it charitably, not a sexy choice. A recent survey of colleges in the Midwest revealed that only three of sixty department chairs said they would be willing to consider adjuncts, even long-term adjuncts, for full-time jobs. 4
    The full-time professor on the tenure track is an endangered species. According to a report by the American Federation of Teachers, only 27.3 percent of faculty fit this description in 2007, a decline from 33.1 percent in 1997. In community colleges, only 17.5 percent are full-time tenured or on the tenure track. 5 Colleges are using more and more graduate students and adjuncts for instruction. The Tufts Daily runs an alarmed story: “Some Departments Seeing Rise in Number of Adjunct Professors.” 6 “Sharp Rise in Adjunct Professors Has Obvious Downsides” is the headline in an editorial from the Daily Iowan bemoaning the fact that the University of Iowa has increased its use of adjuncts by 19 percent over the past five years. 7
    I understood that the use of adjunct instructors like me was probably not good for students. I understood that adjuncts were an exploited class, and that they were, in effect, faculty-union-sanctioned scabs. I didn’t think about any of this. I was glad to have the work. I didn’t even think the pay seemed that bad. Fired up about my new career, I telephoned a much-educated and highly opinionated friend and, before telling him of my own plans, asked if he had ever thought about adjuncting.
    He dismissed the question with an audible yawn. “I would never dream of it,” he said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s too little money. Adjuncts work for the pleasure of feeling important and being called professor. I won’t work for mental wages.”

2
    Writing Hell
    T HE CLASS LOOKED UP AT ME with curiosity as I tossed my attaché case on the desk with studied casualness. The board was filled with writing; I erased it all and wrote my name, followed by ENGLISH 101—COLLEGE WRITING. I set out my attendance book and a stack of course outlines. I sat on the edge of the desk and cleared my throat. The class snapped to attention. The quiet in the room was petrifying. There was nothing stopping me from beginning. Mounted on the ceiling was a projector; its lens, like a gun muzzle, pointed straight at my heart.
    I thought of what Stanley Edgar Hyman, the husband of Shirley Jackson, whose short stories we would soon be reading,