This essay is the second part of a roundtable on Kevin Gannon’s book Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. It follows Contingent editor Marc Reyes’ introduction.
Arthur Radebaugh (1958), via Paleofuture.
Academics all know what an “adjunct” is. An adjunct is a precariously employed, poorly paid instructor who teaches at multiple campuses but gets office space at none. But for entering undergraduates and their parents unfamiliar with the term, news outlets are ready and willing to sound the alarm: Do you really know who is teaching college classes these days? “Unhappy, underpaid, overworked, and sometimes under- or differently-qualified instructors [who] provide less-than-ideal instruction;”1 instructors overly reliant on student evaluations to the effect that they “grade to please, resulting in grade inflation and permissiveness of students’ wrongheaded ideas or disruptive behavior;”2 instructors who have to “rush off to their next gig” right after class ends, preventing them from forming any meaningful relationships with students.3
Kevin Gannon’s manifesto of radical hope offers adjuncts and students a “counternarrative” (p. 50). With radical hope, individual adjunct faculty are not lost in the depersonalized process of “adjunctification.”4 Instead, Gannon enjoins us to think of ourselves in relation to the work we do for and with students. We absolutely need to talk about things like job security and low pay. But, just as Gannon calls for seeing students as humans we can trust, we also need to humanize and trust adjuncts.
I’m an adjunct. Why? Because I care about teaching.
As a group, we are poorly paid and under-resourced laborers. But as individuals, adjuncts are teachers. According to oft-cited statistics, we are the majority of college teachers.5
To care about teaching is a radical stance. Gannon’s statement rings even more true for those of us who are contingent. Teaching while contingent requires openness, scrappiness, and humility.
Like other recent PhDs, I’m also on the academic job market (four years and counting). After a great campus visit in January, I was sure that 2019-2020 would be my last year as an adjunct. I didn’t get the job. After I heard the news, I listened to an aptly-timed episode of The Professor Is In podcast. In their discussion of what to do if you “didn’t get the job,” hosts Karen Kelsky and Kel Weinhold characterized adjuncting as “unattended sorrow,” and “unprocessed pain.”6
Is my pain unprocessed? Is the joy I feel in the classroom my way of burying my head in the sand as I wait for an opportunity that may never come? Am I being duped by the system of adjunctification? Am I in a cult? (I think Kelsky would say yes.7)
I disagree. Far from being unattended, my sorrow is right there in front of me, every single day, renewed with every job cycle. It’s right there every time I check the jobs wiki for news, every time I submit an application, every time I don’t hear back after a Skype interview, every time I see an announcement from a colleague who secured a tenure-track position. On the academic job market as an adjunct, I’m not empowered. There are times when I feel quite powerless.
Once I set foot into the classroom, though, that changes. Gannon writes that “the expression of a truly radical hope” is our perseverance (p. 50). Why else would we—especially adjuncts—continue making the sacrifices we make? We must believe that our actions in the classroom, our interactions with students, our innovative teaching approaches, matter. I teach because students consistently challenge me to see the world in new ways. It is through teaching that I can connect the past to the present. It is through teaching that change is possible. I teach because it brings me joy.
Do you know who is teaching college classes these days? Well, me, or someone like me. Instructors who adapt new tools, texts, and methods into each class. Instructors who do care about what students write on their evaluations, because it helps us to make our courses better. Instructors who are willing to experiment. Instructors who are willing to fail and try again.
What benefit is there to our students if adjuncts think of ourselves as just waiting for the job that will change our lives? Does our so-called “unattended sorrow” seep out into our feedback, lesson plans, or choices in the classroom? What benefit is there to ourselves to internalize this message? My contingency is not complacency. I’m an adjunct because I care about teaching.
In academia at large, adjuncts have little power. But, as Gannon’s manifesto makes clear, we hold positions of power in the classroom. Gannon emphasizes cultivating a classroom environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and failing (p. 138). Adjuncts are familiar with risk and failure! However, rather than thinking of ourselves as the folks who failed because we “didn’t get the job,” we can harness that (fully processed and attended!) familiarity with failure to continue to grow as teachers.
Students tend not to know—or care—that we are adjuncts.8 As Gannon notes, they do know—and care—if we acknowledge their humanity and admit to ours.
- Dan Edmonds, “More Than Half of College Faculty Are Adjuncts: Should You Care?” Forbes,” Forbes, May 28, 2015.
- Caroline Fredrickson, “There’s No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts,” The Atlantic, September 15, 2015.
- Jeffrey J. Selingo, “Who Is Teaching Your Kids in College? You Might Be Surprised,” Washington Post, June 11, 2015.
- Rob Jenkins, “Straight Talk about ‘Adjunctification’,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, December 15, 2014.
- According to the New Faculty Majority, 75.5% of college faculty are off the tenure track. Over fifty percent are “part-time,” or adjunct. See: https://www.newfacultymajority.info/facts-about-adjuncts/.
- Karen Kelsky and Kel Weinhold, hosts, “What To Do If You Didn’t Get the Job (Or the Other Thing You Thought Your Future Depended On, Part I,” Professor Is In (podcast), February 25, 2020, Himalaya Media.
- Karen Kelsky and Kel Weinhold, hosts, “The Academy Is a Cult,” Professor Is In (podcast), January 7, 2020, Himalaya Media.
- Angela B. Fulk, “Confronting Biases Against Adjunct Faculty,” Inside Higher Ed, February 14, 2019.
