Adjunct Lyfe: Floating Between Two Worlds, or Maybe Teaching Really Does Matter

Some days I can barely wrest myself from bed.

If it's a morning class. If it's a large class. If I'm behind on grading. Sometimes I really hate teaching.

My mood is perhaps the other influencer, but undoubtedly there are days when I dread standing up in front of the room. Their beady eyes half-closed (not half-open, I'm a pessimist) as they fail to respond to my overtures for class discussion. I crack the same tired jokes, and then move on to complain about how old my mattress is and consequently how much my back hurts. Some days that's the only reason I get out of bed.

Five years of being an adjunct could probably do this to anyone, but I comfort myself in saying that it is largely circumstantial. If I were paid a decent wage for my work, if I had actual benefits for the first time in my life, if I had more time to write...there's the kicker. Day after day I prop myself up in the front of the classroom to extol the virtues of personal writing and offer my time honored pearls of writerly wisdom and the truth is that I struggle to write on my own anymore.

My Twitter bio denotes I'm a "writer/blogger" but it might as well add a blood red bold "FORMER" before it. Because the truth is I rarely find time to write anymore. Between teaching, drinking, fits of depression, working another part time job and drinking I'm lucky to set aside time to write. My blog sits untouched for the better part of 6 months. I haven't completed a decent short story in over two years. And my freelance career reviewing music has all but dried up. Let's be honest here: the most substantial thing I've written recently is a tweet.

So I suppose I'm resigned to the teaching lifestyle in the way that many failed writers are. But then there are weeks like this one.

Weeks where I'm forced to reflect upon what it is I do and how it can influence people. And how they influence me. (It's like the Blind Side sort of...)

Earlier this week I learned a student of mine from just about a year ago had passed away. He was a shiny faced, well groomed young man cut down in what should have been the best of his years. I received the campus-wide email on Tuesday and then proceeded to track down what little tidbits I could online.

I paused for a moment and thought of him. Briefly I debated attending his visitation, then signed the online guest book as a consolation for the fact that I wouldn't be there...I remembered the conversations we had in class. How calm his demeanor seemed. How affable he was, even though I didn't at all agree with his opinion on Ferguson, MO. Passing him in the halls or on the campus sidewalks, we'd said hi to one another not 8 months ago. And yet, he was gone.

I barely knew him of course, but it was enough to shake me and ponder whether I'd made a difference. Do the students remember me the way I often remember them? Or do they quickly forget the discussions we had, the reflection assignments I forced them to do?

                                                                   .........................

A couple days later I noticed a flyer for a book sale in the student center. I checked the time and realized that it actually started today. Offhandedly, I told myself I would visit in the afternoon after class. It was a Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society) fund raiser, and the name brought to mind my time as an undergrad and member of Sigma. Roaming the same halls I do now as an underpaid adjunct, I had my mind shaped and my pursuits influenced by some of the same faculty members still huddled in their cluttered and aging offices. I count one of the soon to retire English faculty as my mentor, and to her I owe much of my post-graduate career. When I try to end a sentence in a preposition, I still hear her voice in my head.

Class was filled with the same lack of attention on the students' part, and the same self deprecating humor on my part that everyday is. I read a paragraph aloud and then asked the students to tell me what the focus of the description was. Immediately I called on one student who said he forgot. Another who hadn't listened at all...Suddenly, I was taken back to the time my mentor had yelled at us all in British Lit. Clearly no one had read the entry from the text. She spun her wheels for a moment then grew angrier than I'd ever seen her and dismissed the class midway through. I realized if I approached my freshman this way we'd probably never have a full class period.

As class ended, I spoke with a few students individually. One student asked me for help editing a paper for one of her other classes. Once she had left, I remembered the book sale. After informally committing in my head I already felt obligated. I packed up my tattered textbook and headed outside. Up the same old crumbling cement stairs I'd traversed as a student. Noticing the "Caution: May Be Icy" sign flung to the side in the process, I realized how unseasonably warm of a February it had been and marched on.

My time was limited because I'd agreed to meet my mom for lunch at whatever chain restaurant she would decide on this time. Her general negativity and dietary restrictions aside, I looked forward to eating a decent and free lunch.

In the lobby of the student center, past the cafe I spotted two of my former students conversing in front of a long table covered in paper backs. Their spines pointed skyward for easy viewing, as if they actually wanted to be fondled and flipped through.

I greeted both of the students warmly but casually. In my head, I placed that they had been in the same morning class with me. He sat against the far wall, was ex-military and, if the uniform hadn't given it away, was also security on campus. He was a damn good writer, and in particular he had a story about PTSD that I told him he could probably have published somewhere. We would joke about Seinfeld in class. Sometimes I still repeat to myself his perception of Fitzgerald. "It's another story about rich WASPS" and then I laugh.

She was quieter but a great writer. At the time she had worked early morning hours at the airport before class. Her glasses were large but modern and stylish. A sleeker version of horn rimmed glasses for millenials perhaps. On several occasions, I had commented on her paper that she should consider being an English major although I wasn't quite sure what her major was. It was a rarity that I remembered distinctly. I had seen her on campus several times since and realized she was involved with English club and the school literary publication. She looked more professional and mature though, and I'll confess that a couple times I had passed her in the hall and not fully recognized her.

We chatted, the three of us back and forth. I could tell there was some reserve on their part, either because I had been their English professor or simply because they weren't sure if I would even remember them. I couldn't tell them how much I remembered of course, but later on I did tell them where they had sat in my classroom.

She was in fact working the table/event and returned to a secondary spot where the money box was being kept. The security officer slinked off in the same direction and I followed him to the other table. He was picking through novels and commenting on what he liked and didn't like. James Joyce was too wordy, but he liked Hemingway. I remembered his sense of humor, and grabbed a copy of Twilight and offered it to him. We laughed and then I noticed a book by one of our own faculty members. It was none other than my mentor herself.

I thought about my one and only proofreading credit for her scholarly collection on the work of the Brontes. She had dedicated it to me and one of my friends from college. "For those intrepid proofreaders..." it had said and mentioned us both by name.

I chatted with the young woman in charge of the sale again. She claimed that new editions of textbooks always added more female writers. As I picked through the virtually worthless and discarded old editions of English textbooks I considered her claim.

In my pocket I felt my phone buzz and knew it was my mother calling me away from my used book reverie. Attempting to make a casual exit, I walked over to where my former student was standing. She told me how busy she was working two jobs, and that she would graduate at the end of the semester. I should've congratulated her but instead thought about how much she looked like a young faculty member rather than a student. For a second I even confused myself into believing she was talking about teaching rather than attending classes. I chastised myself after I'd said my goodbyes and left, but planned on telling her next time I ran into her.

                                                             ......................

That night, I was still thinking about all three of my students as I sat at the kitchen table in front of my glowing laptop screen. Using my best internet skills, I'd spent some time researching the young man's passing. There was a newspaper piece about his brother winning a wrestling championship and dedicating it to him, but not much else. The death was listed simply as unexpected but no causes were mentioned. I thought about the irony of calling any death unexpected. They all were, even if you had a terminal disease. In my head I invented scenarios and thought about him. Somehow I decided on a car wreck or a truck flipping over somewhere in the sticks of Missouri. It was no more likely than anything else, but it satisfied my curiosity momentarily.

Afterwards, I moved on to the upcoming graduate. I remembered vaguely her mentioning a boyfriend in class, but not much else besides her previous job. The first thing I stumbled upon was a wedding registry and an entire site about the upcoming nuptials. They were to be married following the spring semester around the time of her graduation. On the wedding site was a list of places to visit for out of town patrons. Included was a book store I knew well and the art museum two blocks from my apartment in midtown.

I clicked through the google entries a bit and came upon her Wordpress site which contained a CV and some writing. In the background was a picture of her crouching amongst shelves of books in the basement of the bookstore mentioned in her wedding registry. (There was a picture of me virtually in the same pose floating around the internet somewhere, so I knew the spot well.) Within her blog I found a post about her transition to being an English major her freshman year and a mention of me and my class. She remembered each time I'd written on her papers, praising her work and suggesting she become an English major. Not only that, but it had actually influenced her initially nerve-wracking decision to switch from psychology.

Closing my laptop, I thought about the people who had told me the same thing along the way. And all the teachers and professors that had shepherded me through academia and into the throngs of adjuncts and struggling writers. Maybe it wasn't such a bad way to make a (meager) living after all.  

  

Smith's Crossing

Sometimes I wonder if this is how Elliott felt
when he plunged the knife into his heart
And lacerated every word he'd ever spoken,
every B7 chord he'd ever strummed
ringing out in broken unison.

Then I realize I'm being melodramatic
and I have no Chiba to weep over
my own self absorption and destruction;
There will be no lost-voice addendum
to my own life's works (Because we love you)
Or the disharmony of my own mind as I drown
in crushed autumn leaves
With the trash or the breeze,
please let me be carried away.

Some Girl I Went Out With

Some girl I went out with told me about a free concert tomorrow night,

We got drunk and then got stuck in the rain,

It wasn’t romantic.

She told me her parents were hip

And recommended restaurants to her,

All I could think of was my mom telling me to eat at Apple Bee’s

We had some bougie pizza and fancy salads

And just drank lukewarm water initially,

Midway through I remembered I was already having pizza for dinner.

I wanted to get drunk early in the day

So I asked her to go to the bar down the street,

Obligation and my desire to drink carried me over the brick sidewalks.

When we parted I wondered if we’d talk again,

There was no touching

But this may have been because there was a rash over half her body.

Ode to Dave Ramsey (and My Past)

Luminous memories of a fire inside,
keep me awake/up at night
and stagnant for days.

Conversations with old drunks
remind me I'm alive,
and that I owe no debt to southern aristocracy.

The Portentous Menacing Road of a New Decade: Turning Thirty in the 21st Century

The following was originally published in 2012 (in a slightly different form) as an editorial foreword to the online lit publication Hipster Fight! At the time, I served as the fiction editor and was on the eve of my 30th birthday:

           The Portentous Menacing Road of a New Decade: Turning Thirty in the 21^st Century

      As much as we try to avoid it, time pushes us on and our lives inevitably go through tumultuous periods of change and refashioning in the same way that art movements tend to do. No, I’m not writing a bathetic “Sympathy” card for Hallmark or openly trying to ape F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his more reflective moments; I’ve simply come to the conclusion that once I feel well adjusted, the fates irrevocably throw a wrench into my stagnant and predictable routines. Long term relationships wear out their welcome, jobs end unceremoniously, you poke your eyes out after realizing you’ve murdered your father and married your mother, rebound relationships end as quickly and as drunkenly as they began, you throw away all the crap you’ve been holding on to for several years including all those Eagles LP’s that your uncle gave you and you never really liked anyway but you kept out of some sort of familial guilt or a perceived and confusing rite of passage…but on to the next adventure, amirite?

     I should note that I’ll be turning thirty within a week or two of you reading this. The youthful indiscretion that has propelled me into writing Carver-meets-Salinger flavored fiction and maneuvered me into working for an online literary journal is tapping out its misguided end to the beat of a Replacements b-side. Little will change I’m sure, but it is a time for the façade of serious reflection tempered only slightly by some self-effacing humor.      In these waning time-trials of my twenties, people enter and exit my life as if I were a booth attendant at Grand Central Station. They greet me, stand around for awhile and then pay their fare (or vault the turnstile) and move along. Some of them make return trips, others purchase one way tickets and send me friend requests on Facebook as a consolation prize. Later, I notice they’re married and have a young daughter named Sydney, Madison or Isabella and a son named Jackson (all their sons are named Jackson for some reason…). I click on the picture just to confirm that it is in fact this person’s baby. I’m satisfied by the similarities in facial structures that I compare against my knowledge gleaned from watching hours of DNA testing on Maury, so I move along to stalk some girl that I had a crush on in middle school. She currently works at a salon and still lives down the street from where we grew up, hmmm…      

       Turning thirty, in an era that has obsessively embraced the cult of youth, means less than it used to; at least it doesn’t have the same connotations as it did for Nick Carraway. “Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm. Thinning hair.” It would be easy to get sucked into the cadence of Carraway’s thoughts at this point in my life; I’m newly single and feeling slightly melancholy and bitter about it; many of my friends are either in lengthy domestic partnerships or even married, so I see them less and less (hi Justin, Joel, Cassie, Brandon et al); and my hair has certainly been thinning for several years now, as evidenced by my regular viewing of the Bosley infomercial. Ultimately though, I’m more likely to be swayed by the fact that I’ve read The Great Gatsby upwards of ten or twelve times at this post-grad school juncture of my life.  

     Eventually it occurs to me that maybe we’re not so different, me and this Carraway fellow; both getting carried away with our own mortality while losing friends to the adult world at large…and yet as much as I can commiserate with Fitzgerald’s narrator, I keep my doubts that much will have changed once I wake up on October 16^th (hungover, no doubt). I will have technically aged a year over night, but the Nirvana posters will still hang in my room, keeping watch over stacks of used novels and upright piles of vinyl.  

     The portentous quality of aging that we’ve all stayed up nights dreading is balanced only by the promise of a still distant and opaque horizon.  So we march on, ships against the waves borne back…never mind, I am aping Fitzgerald.   

Alt-Haiku (in the tradition of Kerouac's American Haiku)

Scoach I 

Listening to Wilco,

Cool cross breeze through open bar; 

drunk, aimless, peaceful

Scoach II 

"Return of the Mack"

Plays on the internet juke box, 

Dumb girls scream; I'm back 

Interview Story (from 2011)

The following piece was originally published by Aol Jobs in January of 2011, and underwent moderate edits from site staff. 

I Interviewed at Best Buy

I am a 28-year-old who recently finished graduate school. In the fall of 2003, I was 21, not yet in college, and working part-time to full-time (depending on the week) at Domino's Pizza. Most of my nights were spent in a mind-numbing rush of angry customers, dirty dishes and clogged sinks.

Those were the days when people still mainly purchased music via physical copies of CDs, and as an avid music lover, I spent a fair amount of my spare time in music stores perusing the CDs I'd read about in magazines. On one of my days off I ended up wandering down the CD aisles at Best Buy, something I did on a regular basis. Delivering pizzas 30-plus hours a week and living in my mom's basement afforded me the ability to waste much of the money I made. This eased the pain of living at home and delivering pizza while others were off at college.

I picked up a copy of the Beatles' 'The White Album' and stared at the plain cover and the song list on the back. I couldn't justify the $32 price though, so I set it back on the shelf and continued up the aisle. With 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill' echoing in my head, a guy in a blue shirt with a name tag stopped me.

"Do you need help with anything, sir?"

He had curly, shoulder-length hair that shook when he talked. I always found it entertaining when retail workers called me "sir." As a 21-year-old pizza boy, I wasn't sure what qualified me for that title.

"No, I'm just looking around," I said and stopped in front of him. That was my stock answer for any salesman, even if I did have a question.

"Well, if you need anything just let us know."

A fun-looking job

He left me and returned to his post at the end of the aisle next to a computer. I wondered if he was actually looking anything up or was just playing solitaire when I saw him type something in. At the same time a pretty girl with long brown hair wearing the same blue shirt walked by and smiled at me. I watched her walk over to the same post and start talking to the other guy. She flipped her hair a couple times and laughed.

"What a job," I thought to myself. "They're getting paid to flirt and play around on a computer. I spent most of my working hours alone in a car smelling other people's food."

When I left, I noticed a sign by the registers that said something about an "open interview fair" happening the rest of the week. The sign read "No waiting, come in with your resume and be interviewed immediately."

A comment about Elvis

I came back a couple days later wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. The staff was quick to point me to an enclosed area in the back of the store. I followed a girl to a curtained section and waited behind a couple of other guys in a line. After about 10 minutes, someone directed me to go behind the partition where there was a table set up with a few chairs around it. I sat down in front of a portly, middle-aged man with frizzy gray hair and a face covered in stubble.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm doing good," I said and handed my resume across the table to him. He glanced at it for a few seconds and set it down.

"So you're interested in working at Best Buy?" he asked. He continued with some general questions, and somewhere along the way I told him of my love for music.

"I really like Elvis Costello," he said and looked down at my resume again. "I heard them playing 'Alison' out in the store before I came back here." Just then I remembered a tidbit I'd heard on VH1 earlier in the week.

"Did you know that Huey Lewis's backing band, the News, were the studio band for Costello's first album?" I asked.

I figured he probably already knew it but it wouldn't hurt to throw it out there.

He looked at me funny and smirked. "I didn't know that," he said and chuckled. He scratched his stubble for a moment and thought about it. "Why don't you stick around for a bit and I'll get you a second interview with one of the managers."

A long but worthwhile wait

I agreed (of course!) and thought it all seemed pretty easy as I waited, sitting next to the customer service counter for someone else to interview me. It felt less tolerable after an hour had passed and nobody had said anything to me. Finally, I asked a girl at the counter if she knew what the problem was.

She disappeared for a minute behind the scenes and then came back and told me a manager would be right with me. After about 20 more minutes I wondered what the problem was. She looked over at me again and smiled. Finally, out came a different man, the long-awaited manager.

"Sean?" he asked and looked down at a clipboard. I nodded my head and faked a smile.

"Sorry about that wait, I didn't know you were out here."

I figured he'd just look at my resume and send me on my way.

But still, I followed him into the curtained area again and sat down at the same table. He glanced over my resume and smiled at me.

"It's getting a little late; I'm leaving here at 7. Why don't you just call Lab Corp this week to set up a drug test and come in for orientation next Monday."

I shook his hand and he sent me on my way. It was that easy for me to get out of the pizza delivery business and get a job at Best Buy.