Trenchwork

This promises to be a long post, so let me give you the short version first and then you can read on or not as you so choose.

The Short Version. The last seven weeks have been downright hellish and I have not sailed through them unscathed. I finished meeting deadlines at 1am on Wednesday morning, then spent most of yesterday cleaning up the leftovers. Wednesday, however, I grabbed a friend and we went wandering downtown just to get away from computers, classrooms, and academics. I even picked up a little yarn for a couple of simple projects. The good news is that I have some breathing space for the next three weeks, and I fully intend to take advantage of it.

That was the short version. If you just needed to know that all’s well and I’ll be updating the blog on a regular basis again, feel free to bail now.

The Long Version.
The Academics. For those of you who don’t know, I teach English. Specifically, I teach writing and literature. I’ve taught writing now for the past 12 years, and literature for a bit less than that. I started with face-to-face (f2f) courses, then hybrids (f2f with online elements), then purely online courses. I now teach both f2f and online. I’ve edited for literary journals and tutored individuals. I’ve translated. And you know, with all of it, I’ve done it through the lens of writing. I am at heart and in spirit, a writer. It’s something I’m passionate about, and which I believe I both do and teach well. To an extent, that’s why the past two months have been so difficult: I’ve been working with a system which, in essence, devalues writing.

I miss teaching writing in an academic environment which values student writing even as it makes demands upon that writing.

At the moment, I’m in the same position as a host of other academics with advanced and terminal degrees: I am an adjunct. It isn’t by choice, but is a condition of life because I live in a place where the likelihood of finding a permanent position is nill to none. So, I do what many other academics do: I piece together jobs in order to earn a living and use my skills—skills I believe are important. Over the past two months, I’ve taught a distance literature course with Southern New Hampshire and tutored writing with Smarthinking. On the Norwegian front, I’ve also covered four lectures for a Global English course, helped teach an academic writing course (i.e., prepared 1 lecture and 6 classes), handled weekly “small groups” (7) for the composition portion of the English proficiency course, marked 110 attempts at an argument essay, held 115 oral proficiency exams, and had three days worth of office hours for those same students. Somehow, when I list it all this way, it really doesn’t seem as if it should be so very much. Because you’re afraid to turn down jobs for fear that you won’t be asked again, you accept tasks and responsibilities you might otherwise have let slide by you. Unfortunately, accepting everything is, in its own way, as problematic as accepting nothing. As any other adjunct will tell you, piecing together part time jobs is inevitably tougher than carrying a single full-time job. You lack the ability and opportunity to focus on one task, or one perspective. Because you’re split in half a dozen different directions, you spend twice as much energy performing the basics.

To say that I’m exhausted at the moment would be putting it mildly. To say that I am not happy with my own performance would be no less true. In the chaos of simple survival, I made mistakes I would normally not have made, and was not up to my usual standards in my own areas of strength.

There has to be a way to balance all of this. I cannot repeat a period like this one, but as long as I am here, I see no way to avoid it.

And yet, it is not all negative. Last week I had office hours for those students who wanted to come in and talk about their essays. I was there from 8-5 on Tuesday, 8-2 on Wednesday (followed by teaching class until 5:45), and 12:15 until 7pm on Thursday (preceded by teaching class from 8-12). On Tuesday, the students somehow timed it so that they actually showed up just as another was leaving, so there was little wait time. It was, however, non-stop; I had two separate five-minute intervals when there were no students. On Wednesday, that changed. There were no breaks, and more than once when I glanced out into the hallway, there were four students sitting on the floor, waiting their turn. On Thursday, all bets were off. Since there were no appointments and the system was first-come-first served, they came. And they waited. They showed up before I could arrive from teaching the last class, then before I was supposed to leave at 4:30 and before the doors were locked. Knowing that I was not going to leave until they were all taken care of, they waited. And I was so proud of them because they DID come, and they DID wait. Some of them waited for three hours. They sat on the floor in the hallway, ordering themselves with all the proficiency of the Atlanta airport during peak traffic—indeed, perhaps more—and idled more patiently than I would have in their position. Only one student had an attitude when his turn finally came, and I found myself suspecting he would have had that same attitude even if he had had no wait at all.

These students work in an evironment which places little to no emphasis on writing. I recognize that academia is often a game of politics, but I’ve seen enough to know that the problem is not with the department. The problem is with governmental funding and university prioritization. The result is that there is little to no writing. In this particular class, they have one obligatory translation assignment, one obligatory 500-800 word argument essay, and one exam which will include a 400-word argument essay. A short essay which was required for an introductory literary course was cut because of lack of funding. How can the powers-that-be truly expect students to perform to a standard when they do not actually have a chance to perform? And, when they do perform, have little opportunity for feedback and training in that performance? Some of those students were so thrilled to be able to talk about their work that I even considered offering a free full-scale composition class just to help them meet the need. (And before you respond to that, relax. I did offer, but the university seems to have a policy against accepting unpaid labor.)

I have to admit, however, that working with them made me well and truly depressed. There is so much more I wanted to do, and none of which I can do because of the system limitations.

The Knitting Front. Obviously, there has been no knitting happening lately. That doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. This arrived:

It’s an old Starmore book, and I bought it used, but I’m increasingly intrigued by Aran knitting. I have a ton of lace I want to tackle, but I’d love to find a zippered Aran vest . . .

I also ordered an umbrella swift and a ball winder. The only yarn related thing I’ve done in the past couple of months has been to wind up the two skeins of Claudia I received from my Secret Pal, and the hank of fingering-weight yarn I received in the lace swap. I learned something in the three hours it took me to wind those 1200 yards of lovely merino-tencel and the two skeins of buttery Claudia merino: I have better things to do with my time than hand-wind yarn. I mean, I love the feel of the yarn, and looking at the shifting shades and hues, but I’d rather actually knit than wind. More importantly, my shoulders hurt by the time I finished. That cinched it, and I placed the order this afternoon. Of course, now I need to go find yarn to wind. (grin)

I’ve also done something some of you may laugh about, and I’m not going to tell you about it until it gets here in about a week.

And finally, I picked up yarn this week to knit a family member legwarmers and socks. His circulation and nerves have gotten so bad that he’s freezing—almost literally. It’s time to crank out a pair of wool socks or two, and some long legwarmers. I opted for a superwash wool for the socks (Dale’s Freestyle), and superwash merino in a baby wool for the legwarmers. I even cast on the first sock tonight.

And that, friends and neighbors, is all the news there is to print. Or, more accurately, that’s all for today.