Adjunk

I was hunched over in the backyard, left hand gripping my knee and right hand, index and middle fingers extended, pushing as deep into my throat as possible. I had tried to disappear quietly, easing the sliding glass doors open and finding a site in the yard where none of the house windows would reveal my position to our dinner guests. I hope it comes loose quickly so I am not missed. I hope they don't notice my flushed face when I return, the beads of sweat on my forehead.

I don't have an eating disorder, but I might as well. Eat. Choke. Force myself to gag. Repeat. Seized in my throat by unpredictable spasms, solid food refuses to go down; it has to come back the way it came in. Steak and chicken have been removed from the menu. Even a well-masticated Triscuit feels like swallowing a chainsaw.

When the fear of getting something hung made it impossible for me to enjoy entertaining guests or eating out for fear that I would have to excuse myself to get the suspended morsel unhung, I phoned my family doctor. After filling my mind with visions of cancerous cells clogging my esophagus, he sent me to a GI. The GI, who I met about two seconds before succumbing to anaesthesia, determined from my symptoms that an esophagogastroduodenoscopy was in order. Not surprisingly, they call the procedure an EGD for short. They put you out for the EGD, which involves snaking a tiny camera down your throat, stomach and the upper reaches of your intestines. I would not want to be awake for that. The last thing I remember was the lens of the camera swimming for the pried open cave of my mouth like a lone fish eye.

Before the procedure a nurse showed me to my gown and then threw the curtain closed on her way out to give me some privacy. I undressed, clumsily fiddled with the ties until I was more or less covered, and waited for the nurse to return to rub up a vein for the IV. She didn't come back for awhile, so I went in search of something to read, finding the latest copy of the local home showcase magazine beckoning from a rack on the wall.

The chancellor's house from the area university was featured. I've got two degrees from that university and I've been teaching there part time for five years, but this was my first glimpse inside the behemoth mansion, a 9,000 square foot structure with two kitchens; the whole thing cost two million dollars to build. The dining room seats 66, but apparently there's no room for adjunct instructors at the fund raising dinners. And that makes sense. How much could a person making $15,000 a year afford to give?

I flipped the page. The main kitchen has more sinks in it than my entire house. Glimmering stainless steel appliances, adorned with the prestigious Viking label, broke the expanse of granite countertops. I am sure the appliances alone cost generous alumni donors more than my salary sets back the taxpayers. The fridge was bigger than a dorm room. The island seemed more like a continent.

Owing to economic recession, the chancellor's university had a hiring freeze for the 2009-10 academic year. The following year the budget was sliced by six percent, and the university passed the buck to students through a $500 tuition hike. My salary, which is less than half of what's considered a "living wage" for where I live, has remained stagnant for the last two years, and is up only a few hundred dollars from what it was when I started. Perhaps, given the current economic climate, the opulent spread of the chancellor's mansion was poorly timed and in poor taste. Like a lot of things lately, I had trouble swallowing it.

Down the hill from the chancellor's house, working quarters aren't quite so luxurious. I am housed in my department's adjunct office. The office was once a classroom, but due to its position above the aging hall's boiler room, it was deemed unfit for teaching purposes. In winter, when the archaic heating system strains to heat the building, the room constantly shakes like a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. In the room's next life it housed the graduate assistants, but their vociferous complaints led to their exodus into a cushy room across the hall that has--shudder--window air conditioning units. My office space enjoys no such amenities, yet, despite the shakes in winter and the oppressive heat in August and September, there is always a crowd. It's not really my office at all, but rather a communal earthquake grounds shared by 14 of my coworkers. The 14 of us inhabit 14 desks, strewn about the crowded space, taking on various shapes and sizes, no two alike. We share four computers, hand-me-downs from the grad students across the hall. There are two printers. One that doesn't work and one that sometimes works.

The adjunct office is not exactly a welcoming environment for student consultations, as you're constantly reassuring them that the trembling structure isn't going to collapse on top of them. "I promise you're not nervous," I joke. "It's just the room that's shaking." But, as I leaf through the home magazine and see the chancellor's master bathroom, with its separate room for the toilet, so spacious that I could park my beat up truck in it, and its dressing room that dwarfs my son's bedroom, it became more apparent than ever that the conditions--both physical and financial--that I work in are no laughing matter.

Half of my department is staffed by non-tenure track faculty, most of whom are part-time employees despite their wish for full-time work, and none of whom have had the right to vote in committee and department meetings. It's the apartheid of higher education, and, not surprisingly, the caste system creates a lot of animosity between the haves and have nots. We want a living wage, we want health benefits, and we want the right to vote on department matters. The tenured faculty fight to stifle our upward mobility, clinging to the power bestowed upon them by their PhDs like politicians trailing in the polls.

And their numbers are down. According to the New York Times, only 27 percent of college classes are taught by tenured professors, down from 75 percent 50 years ago. When a tenured professor retires, universities, ever conscious of their bottom lines, can replace the outgoing professor with three part-time instructors, give the part-timers the maximum number of classes that they can teach without qualifying for benefits, and save a boatload of money. We're quick to admonish Walmart for such behavior, but the public universities entrusted in developing the workforce that will be the lifeblood of our country's future get a free pass.

By every measure--student evaluations, peer reviews, and the end of year reports from my supervisors--I am an excellent teacher, as are the majority of non-tenure track and part-time instructors I've huddled under the door frame with in the earthquake room. A PhD and the comfort of tenure does not necessarily make for a better teacher, especially for those professors who view teaching as an annoyance that gets in the way of their research responsibilities. Most adjuncts are highly motivated teachers, and we can focus all of our efforts on teaching, as most of us are not expected to contribute research as part of our jobs. We work semester to semester with no job security. We're certainly not in it for the money, so it follows that we not only have a passion for shepherding our students to the essential knowledge they need in their academic and professional careers, but also that we must perform our jobs well in order to keep those eleventh-hour emails offering us one more class, one more paycheck, from disappearing from our inboxes.

But, even though most part-time instructors do their jobs well, the system hurts students. Because they are so poorly compensated, adjuncts do not have one job. Many, like me, pick up a class or two at the closest community college (in fact the local community college has syphoned many of its full-time faculty from the pool of adjuncts at my university). We teach for online schools like the University of Phoenix. No matter how competent and motivated the instructor is, she or he cannot possibly serve the individual needs of their students as well while teaching seven classes as they can while teaching three. And the overload of caffeinated late-night grading and planning sessions can lead to burnout for even the most dedicated teacher. Whether it's due to burnout, frustration with the lack of a voice within their institutions, or being forced to find another career path for financial reasons, adjuncts are a transient lot, and the heavy reliance on them creates instability in the foundation of our higher education system. If the bottom line was providing the best education--to truly best serve the public that supports them--then public universities would take care of their best teachers. But the bottom line is not providing the best education. The bottom line is the bottom line, so adjuncts will go on being exploited, reheating the leftover beans and rice while, up the hill, a chef prepares gourmet fare for the chancellor's well-heeled guests.

But I couldn't swallow that steak dinner anyway. To the bemusement of the nurse, I babbled nonsensical dream words as she welcomed me, begrudgingly, back from the twilight sleep. At first she, too, seemed to be speaking in a foreign, syrupy tongue, but I finally made out the message: "You're waking up. The doctor will be in to see you soon." As the cloud of anaesthesia burned away, I thought about my son. I didn't have any health insurance before he was born, but the responsibility of taking care of him brought with it the responsibility of taking better care of myself. So I shell out $400 a month out of pocket, and if not for that I wouldn't be here with my ass hanging out the back of my gown. An EGD can cost as much as $2,000 without insurance, and that's not in the adjunct's budget. Today my bill will be $30. And, thankfully, that $30 bought some piece of mind. The doctor's camera didn't find anything out of the ordinary in my esophagus. No cancer. He explained to me that stress and acid reflux are likely the culprit for my esophageal spasms. The throat uses contractions to move food to the stomach, but the spasms make these contractions irregular, uncoordinated and overly powerful. Instead of being moved to its next stop on the GI train, the food gets stuck.

I was ready to get unstuck. There's a note on the door of my department chair's chambers explaining that he is in, but the door is closed to keep the cool air from escaping. He has an air conditioning unit too. The cold front that greeted me when I entered was refreshing. I had spent the last hour sorting through the last five years of my life, dumping most of the desk clutter into a recycling bin I had dragged from the hallway to my sweltering communal office. The chair's secretary announced my presence and I strained a "Hello" over the droning of the AC. I felt out of place in my plaid shorts and polo shirt, products of the clearance rack at Old Navy, when the chair rose to greet me, resplendent in a dark, tailored suit.

"Is this easy or complicated?" he asked. I had no appointment and he was expecting someone.

"It's complicated, but it won't take long, " I promised.

I told him that I would not be returning for another semester without a raise and benefits. He mumbled something about budget restraints, wanting to help me, but not being able to wave a magic wand.

I spent nine years as a student at that university, getting a degree in journalism, a license to teach high school English, and finally an MA in English Education. I spent five years teaching there. But I walked out the door without mixed emotions, without even a tinge of melancholy. No regrets. I don't need this stress.

Maybe Walmart is hiring.