An Adjunct’s Lament
Staying out late on week nights is inconvenient, but the getting up in front of the students and interacting with them is kind of fun. So now, the term papers come rolling in and few of these graduate students can write. Ah, well. They don’t pay me to teach. They pay me to grade.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
Zazzy is applying to an online degree program. She had to submit a personal statement. I’m paraphrasing, but one of the instructions basically said that the paper should show evidence that editing beyond the use of spell check is required. “Why did they say that?” she asked me. “Because the accessibility of online programs means a lot more morons are applying and, if they didn’t say that, a number of them wouldn’t do that and would end up wasting everyone’s time.”Report
One of the things I’ve discovered and found disappointing is that both of the following are true:
(1) From a student’s perspective, application fees are relatively high, high enough that they might dissuade a qualified student from applying.
(2) From a university’s perspective, application fees are essentially nothing. They don’t even begin to touch what it costs to actually process an application.Report
I’m in the midst of this pain right now. There is a little confirmation bias on my part, though. The great papers take little effort or time to grade and provide feedback. The terrible papers take FOREVER! I find I have to sort the papers so that I get a few good ones up front so I can maintain my morale through the bad ones later on.
I recently graded a paper written by a graduate student who managed to use “to”, “too”, and “two” incorrectly at least once each. Maybe I was being trolled…Report
The great papers take little effort or time to grade and provide feedback. The terrible papers take FOREVER!
So true. Which goes a long way toward explaining why I’m commenting here instead of finishing the task at hand.Report
It’s the last session of class. What runs through the adjunct professor’s mind?
I wonder if I’m teaching next semester? I sure got used to eating.
(To qualify to sit for the patent bar exam, I had to take a couple semesters of college chemistry, at age 45ish, which I did at Santa Monica College. I was older than the professor in both semesters, not to mention the students. So I’d talk with the professors after class and they would tell me about the life of an adjunct in the Southern California community college system. It sounds like a challenging way to make a living.)
Burt, what do you teach?Report
Adjunct hell is rough.Report