Position Wanted

I love teaching. I like talking—not about myself but about the things I love and do well: writing, making things with my hands. I like connecting writing with life, life with writing. I like telling stories, bending the past and the future with my mind.

But after fifteen years of being an adjunct, an inessential addition, an afterthought, I wonder how much good I do myself. Isn't the very definition of what I do an assault to my character, to my self-esteem?

But teaching is a privilege I enjoy! After a decade and a half, I am still enthusiastic about my students and my subject. And I have always thought it was something I do well. My evaluations are like anyone else's: a student or three who hate my guts for mostly personal reasons, a handful who think I'm the bees knees, also for personal reasons, and a majority who can't be bothered but still manage to put a check mark in the average and above-average boxes. But I have letters from students who remember me fondly and think I taught them a thing or two. And that's why I stay. After all, who would stay at a job that isn't, in some way, rewarding? A masochist!

Adjunct teaching could be a good life. The hours are wonderful, the conversation (my students are bright as mirror in the sun!) is inspiring, and I learn as much from them; it is quite the way to stay hip (they know all the good music and slang words). I envy their youth, though I have already had my own.

But now that Towson has hired so many full-time lecturers (from a pool of people who deserved it, many having been adjuncts since I was a student there in the early eighties!), I have no job for spring.

Position Wanted: Essential addition. I can write poetry and essays (see entry below), type 85 wpm, make mosaics, take pictures, use Photoshop and other Mac design software, write ad copy, design just about anything. I can also make you laugh, and I'm not too hard on the eyes. I can't balance the books or outrun the police, but I can juggle numbers and bake a file in a cake. And I'm willing to learn anything, if the pay is good.

It's hard, of course, to leave your lover. So I will probably be calling Loyola and Johns Hopkins this week, seeking out another adjunct gig. And around and around and around she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows. The future, for me, is as open as a ferris wheel (albeit one that has a daughter, a husband, two dogs, and a book about cake to write).