The Will to Prepare

Tanzanian marathoner and trainer Juma Ikangaa said, "The will to win is nothing without the will to prepare." I've been thinking about these words of wisdom for two reasons.

The first is American runner Meb Keflezighi's win in Monday's Boston Marathon - the first American to win since 1985. I met Meb at the Pittsburgh Marathon Expo several years ago and have his autograph: he signs, "Run to Win" - and then explains that winning is personal, individual. Obviously, he could tell to look at me that I was not going to "win" the Pittsburgh marathon. But in my mid-50s at the time, persevering through a long run was (and still is) a win.


Earlier this month I joined friends in running the inaugural Scranton Half Marathon. I ran it with almost no training. It's not that I didn't have the will to prepare - I just didn't have the health to prepare. I went through two bouts of flu with a broken toe in between.

Meb might have said that I hobbled to win that day.

It was not the smartest thing I ever did - the chances of getting injured were huge, especially considering that a few miles of the race were on an uneven and rocky trail. I was lucky - and I had enough residual fitness from before the triple health whammy to finish, and to recover quickly.

How, you may be wondering, is any of this relevant to labor conditions in academia?

When I began my PhD program, I had already run seven marathons, and I ran my eighth during my first year there. I don't think I would have had the nerve to go back to school if I hadn't learned about the will to prepare through long-distance running. Both events are more about tenacity than native talent - and tenacity is learned.

And, again, I was lucky. Two years after finishing my degree, I landed a tenure-track job. I had taught as an adjunct for seven years, in a one-year contract job for exactly one year, and in a job with no tenure or rank for four years. I was prepared.

But sadly, preparation isn't always enough. My electronic devices are being flooded with stories about the glut of PhDs on the market and the ever decreasing number of full-time, tenure-track jobs for them. So many of my friends are prepared - prepared for a marathon that was cancelled while they were lacing their shoes for the first training run.

I realize more and more that if he problem of contingent faculty is to be solved, it falls on the shoulders of full-timers, tenured and tenure-track faculty to stand up and say, no more. We must help our unemployed and underemployed colleagues run to win.

Power of the Blog?

Not mine, but that of Becky Tuch I wrote about in my last entry. Suddenly, in its call for proposals for the 2015 conference, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) is not only calling for, but begging for, proposals dealing with faculty labor issues.

Coincidence? You decide.

But thanks to Becky Tuch and her supporters (including me, I hope), AWP is paying attention.

The rest of the world? Join us!

Are the Professional Organizations Supporting Organization?

According to a recent article in Salon, not so much. At least not the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the organization of programs, professors, and students in creative writing.

In her article entitled "Professors in Homeless Shelters," Becky Tuch calls the organization out:

At this year’s conference in Seattle, the biggest AWP conference yet, you did not have a single panel dedicated to adjunct teaching. Nor were there any panels addressing this shift toward part-time faculty at colleges. Absent also were lectures, discussions or Q&A sessions addressing these changes in the academic climate.

 The involvement of AWP is especially important, I believe, because teachers with creative writing degrees are more likely to become adjuncts than many other faculty. While English departments have an embarrassment of riches in the number of potential teachers with advanced degrees in literature, composition, and creative writing, in many ways the creative writing graduates have the hardest time.

They have earned Masters of Fine Arts (MFAs), degrees considered terminal, and yet they are in competition with people who have earned PhDs. If they do not have a published book as well as a string of smaller publications, they are not considered for positions teaching creative writing in their genre. They fall back into the pool of candidates for jobs in composition, and often feel fortunate to find even part-time positions (as I did).

There is better news, however. The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), whose national conference starts today in Indianapolis has been paying attention. The Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) conference this summer is dedicated to the nature of work and workplace issues in writing programs (generally composition programs, to differentiate WPA and AWP). But they all - and we all - could do more. Tuch concludes:

But we working writers/teachers/students need to get our act together. We need to start talking about the treatment of adjuncts and graduate students. We need to stop pretending there is no problem. We need to work together to address these issues. You, AWP, are in a unique position to help us do that.

Please, AWP - connect with your fellow organizations as well as your own members, and join the conversation.

Spring Break!

While I've written (more than once, I think) about how I do not get summers off, I will confess: I take spring break off (with the exception of checking email to make sure the school didn't burn down in my absence).

Last year, I spent spring break at a professional conference - but, hey! it was in Las Vegas so I counted it as work and play.

This year, I'm doing what students do: I'm in Florida.

But for four years I taught in a school with a year-round schedule and no spring break.

Before that, for seven years, I taught as an adjunct at three different institutions. On good years, two out of three of them would have the same week off for spring break. Several years, all three had different break weeks. How often did they all have the same week? That would be exactly never.

So at least I got two or three slightly easier weeks, but never a true break.

Friends of mine who are currently working as adjuncts are in the same position (I would have said same boat, but no boat for them). In addition to teaching heavier loads for less pay and no benefits,  part-time faculty members don't enjoy one of the expected perks for students and teachers alike - a break in the middle of the spring term.

Just one more overlooked disadvantage of the two-tiered faculty system - and a sign of just how far those tiers are from each other.

Why I Didn't Quit

As the new essay genre "Why I Quit Academia" continues to be populated with stories of poverty, lack of respect, anger and frustration, I thought I would respond with why I didn't quit - and why "Why don't you quit?" is not the best thing to say to contingent faculty expressing their concerns about their situations.

I didn't quit because finally, in my 40s, I found my calling. I had bounced around in a variety of jobs from journalism to make-up artist, hoping that eventually I would write the Great American Novel. Instead, I got an MFA in fiction writing, wrote the Not So Bad American Novella (yet to be published), and managed a high-end women's shoe store.

The opportunity to teach composition as an adjunct came through a connection - it certainly wasn't what I knew, because I had never taught. It was who I knew, and that was good enough for me.

My first job wasn't just teaching composition. It was teaching a section of basic writing (a course for students not prepared for college-level composition courses) and a section of students who had just that moment arrived in the United States from Africa.

I was in heaven. I fell for basic writing, and I fell hard. I still consider it the most important part of my career. I also consider it a calling, even a gift. I understand students who struggle academically, who don't know how to navigate the unknown territory of academia. And I loved working with the African students, who were new to both academia and America (and I'm not sure which culture was stranger to them).

And so, as I have reported here before, I spent seven years cobbling together teaching jobs at three colleges, freelance editing, and part-time make-up artist work until, after finishing my coursework for my PhD, I found my first full-time teaching job.

I know I've been lucky. I have a husband with a good job, so those semesters when I was down a course, we didn't have to struggle as single teachers do. I got that first full-time job. And the second. And, finally, the tenure-track dream job (note: slight irony intended).

But I know many adjuncts will not find the path I stumbled upon (in both senses). And yet, they don't quit. They are dedicated teachers who dream -futilely, far too often- of a real career. They believed the Great American Lie: Get an education, and you will live the Great American Dream.

Friends who told me I should quit were often the same friends who were unhappy in their jobs - in or out of academia. Why didn't they quit? And what would I have done if I did quit? Return to the shoe trade? I had already reimagined myself too often.

So if contingent faculty choose to labor on, in spite of the conditions, in spite of the odds against ever finding full-time employment, I hope it is for the same reason I did: the love of teaching.

This, however, does not justify the continued abuse of contingent faculty. And, yes, if adjuncts all quit, the academy might have to rethink its labor policies.

But more likely it would just churn out thousands more MAs to take their places.

So instead of suggesting that your adjunct friends just quit, take to the streets. Write to your local college administration, your newspaper, whoever might listen. Don't send your kids to colleges that abuse faculty labor pools. Help your friends in ways that might help the academic world.