Bullets from the Trenches (Jacks Gets Fired)

One could argue, if one were interested in such a semantic argument, that a Facebook post I wrote was misleading. Though it seemed to ignite a little firestorm in my infinitesimal corner of the interwebs, garnering something like a comment a minute for several hours, there’s a decent chance that the world at large missed the news. So if you missed the status, here it is:

“So that’s what it feels like to be unceremoniously fired after 7 years on the job. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.”

The word that everyone latched onto was the word fired. I don’t mean to suggest that I was hauled into an office somewhere, read a list of grievances about my performance, and then Donald Trump-style sent packing. That didn't happen.

It has to be said that my teaching job is always, was always, contingent on a variety of factors, primarily upon institutional need. I was, as I have mentioned before, an adjunct professor. This means I am not a full-time employee, but a revolving contract employee. When an institution has severe dips in enrollment, my presence at that institution as an educator is no longer necessarily required. This has always been a possibility and is a stark reality for many of my friends and colleagues in academia. I suppose I could have been clearer about the firing had I written, students won’t be available to show up to my classes, so I shouldn't either. This happens all the time.

But I had hoped it wouldn't happen to me, hope being a large staple of the adjunct diet. I've been teaching at Stephens since January of 2007, and through all of the structural changes and shifts in leadership and highs and lows of enrollment, I've managed to avoid losing all of my classes in one semester. In fact, as of early December, when I was still grading finals and wrapping up the fall of 2013, I was also prepping articles and assignments for the spring. Texts for the class were chosen, syllabi were undergoing a good tinkering.

I had some warning, just after finals, when I received word that enrollment was down and that some departmental classes were going to be cut and consolidated. But I didn't need this warning to know how easily expendable my job was; that was a basic fact underscoring the role of the lowly adjunct.

After finals, I followed up with the powers that be about the status of my courses, but had yet to hear anything, so I unhinged my tethers to classwork for a few weeks to focus on the holidays with my family. My husband came home on leave, Christmas happened, we celebrated New Year’s Eve.

Forget the image of the board room firing, and imagine instead my sipping coffee in bed, checking headlines on my phone, relishing the last few days I had with the husband before the USMC swiped him back to Pensacola, when I loaded the Stephens page onto my phone to check which classrooms I’d been assigned this semester. Again, I’d heard nothing from my boss regarding the fiscal decisions the college had made, so I assumed I should go ahead as originally planned and prep for a new semester. But my classes no longer appeared on the course schedule. I whipped open my laptop and logged onto my email, where I found the information I was looking for.

See the important word in that Facebook status I made wasn't fired. My job ceasing to exist wasn't that big of a shocker for me. The important word in that sentence is unceremonious.

Resting there in my inbox was a two-sentence email which read:

“Jackie- (misspelled, no less)

            Sorry we had to cancel your classes. We’ll be in touch to retrieve your keys.”

And that, my friends, is fucking unceremonious. After 7 years, hundreds of students, countless papers graded, sleepless nights organizing lecture material, letters of recommendation written, advice given, poems and stories edited, committee meetings, and stellar, I mean STELLAR, reviews by students who've taken my classes, it all ended in a two sentence email. It was like that scene from Sex in the City when Carrie gets dumped via post-it note.

This is reality for 75% of people working in American academia right now. No thanks for the hard work, no sorry you won’t be teaching this year, no see ya around—just ‘classes cancelled, give us our keys back’. There is no recourse, no unemployment benefits, no judicial proceedings. Done. And while some might not call this being fired in the traditional sense, it still feels like fired. You still feel useless, you still feel utterly disposable, and you still lose the money you've been counting on.

But here’s what makes me happy—

First, for three days after I made this little Facebook status, I was flooded with email messages and comments from former students expressing so much gratitude for having been in my classes. Students I had my first semester teaching sent me notes of outrage at the institutional decision to sack me, students reflected on assignments they remembered writing for my class, voiced appreciation for the opportunity to have met me and for the things they learned from me.

And second, as my Composition students can attest, I embrace language as a magical art. Magic beyond the notions of muse and inspiration, but I mean magic in the Bardic tradition. As my magical guru, Alan Moore, would tell it “Art is magic, and magic is art. The word for the grimoire, the book of spells, is simply a fancy way of saying ‘grammar’ and to cast a spell is to quite literally spell.” It is interesting and sometimes strangely informative to explore the evolutionary meaning of words as an almost divinatory practice. This is something I told students when I made them write a definition paper, and showed them how to use etymology to gain a greater sense of why certain words are used the way they’re used, and how they came to mean what they mean.

So I looked up the word fired in the etymology dictionary and here’s what I learned:

In the sense of "sack, dismiss", fired is first recorded 1885 in American English (earlier "throw (someone) out" of some place, 1871), probably from a play on the two meanings of discharge: "to dismiss from a position," and "to fire a gun," fire in the second sense being from "set fire to gunpowder," attested from 1520s. Of bricks, pottery, etc., from 1660s. Related: Fired; firing. Fired up "angry" is from 1824. Firing squad is attested from 1904.

And maybe I’m crazy (a distinct possibility always rolling around in my brain somewhere) but the language of being fired having come from these origins seems beautifully metaphoric for me. Imagining myself closed up in a chamber, and without warning, the firing pin strikes me in the ass, the pressure hurling me forward. And while what is left behind is a now useless tool in the hands of the shooter, I’m zooming away toward something else, soaring through the sky, faster than a speeding bullet.

Enthusiasm don't pay the bills, son!

On occasion, I’m asked to talk to certain organizations or groups of students or writers about my life. More specifically, I’m asked to talk about the content of my writing, primarily the seeming dichotomy of being who I am. And usually there’s a Q & A afterward, a set aside amount of time that generally is characterized by questions about the stripper job.

“Do you find yourself growing irritated at men because of the job?”

“How did you start doing it?”

“Who in your life knows about the job, and from whom do you keep it secret?”

There are elements of my life that I’m so accustomed to, I forget that people might find it interesting or unusual.  I've been doing a curious amount of interviews lately as a result of some of the talks I've given. And I’m noticing that the question I’m least often asked, or least often asked to elaborate on is this: “If you’re a professor, why are you also a dancer?” That whole element of my life is sort of overlooked for the juicier, and admittedly probably more intriguing, details of the stripper job. What bothers me is that the conversation I feel like we should be having, if there needs to be a conversation about me in the first place, is why DO I have to have both jobs?

I almost never reveal my daytime identity at the nighttime job. Largely it’s because I feel entitled to some semblance of privacy. But also, if the idea of privacy weren't in the foreground, I know that the truth about my academic life in the context of the strip club is almost unbelievable. I could make up the most asinine bullshit—I was born into a family of Irish travelers and I grew up in an RV, I’m a folk artist who makes lawn furniture out of discarded silverware, blah blah blah—and people buy it by the cartload. But the truth is far less believable, and so even if I felt compelled to tell it, no one would believe me anyway. The Cassandra Complex.

Here is the answer to the question I want to be asked: In name, yes, I am a professor of African-American Literature and English Composition. That sounds impressive, perhaps, inspiring thoughts of tweed jackets with leather elbow patches, and days spent in grand lecture halls, or quietly book-buried in an office behind a stout oak desk. But that’s not true for 76% of college professors. Yes, 76%, over three-quarters of American college/university faculty are adjuncts. Sometimes institutions dress the names up: part-time, continuing part-time, voting adjunct, etc. but ultimately the names define the same occupational status: higher education untouchable.

I teach two courses nearly every semester [sometimes it’s three, occasionally it is shaved down to one]and I am paid per course. I receive no benefits, no sick leave, no retirement or pension, no funding for professional development, no sabbatical, no real voice in administrative decisions regarding curriculum or course scheduling. There are semesters when my courses get cut, and therefore, my pay is suddenly halved without warning. I pay for my own parking. My gross income from teaching topped out last year at around $16,000. And honestly, that’s pretty spectacular adjunct pay. I have friends at other institutions who’ve worked the same hours for far less. All that said, I think a more colorful illustration to describe my work in academia is this: it costs more to board and ride a horse at Stephens than it does to pay my salary. That’s not an exaggeration. I just added up the fees. And don’t even get me started on what my students pay in tuition, room & board, technology fees. That number would likely pay my salary four-fold.

Since the economic crash of 2008 [coincidentally, the year I entered graduate school, partially at the behest of the former VP of Academic Affairs at my institution] 40% of full-time jobs in academia have been permanently eliminated. Simply put, there are no new jobs for MFA’s or Ph.D.’s available. When they do become available, the influx of applicants for a single position is gargantuan. If I were to quit, seek a non-academic job, I sever ties to my institution, limiting my likelihood of ever teaching again. And honestly, aside from the embarrassingly low pay, I really love teaching. I blush with joy when I get to share information with students. My enthusiasm is palpable in my literature classes. I don’t want to give up teaching; I would just like to think that it holds some value in the broader sense. Joy and enthusiasm don’t pay the bills, son.

Moreover, when I watch the money generated by academic institutions via tuition, sporting events, alumni donation get funneled into bigger buildings, posh furnishings, more bricks, more mortar instead of toward the development and maintenance of faculty, I wonder what the hell college is even for anymore. When the highest paid employee in the state of Missouri is the Mizzou football coach [or maybe it’s the basketball coach . . . either way, they both make more than our governor] meanwhile, I’m wondering how I’ll make it if one of my courses doesn’t fill and has to be cut, thereby cutting my already paltry salary in half. And don’t give me that old shenanigans about how sports generate money for the institution, so it’s crucial to hire the best, yada yada – shut up! I get it. I understand the commercial and economic factors behind this decision making. But ultimately, or at least historically, don’t people go to college to learn? Doesn’t anyone want to know stuff anymore? And why are faculty and faculty positions the first on the chopping block when it’s time to trim the fat? Something is wrong when 76% of faculty is paid as poorly as I am, while the football coach is a millionaire.

[Likewise, something is wrong when my husband, an active-duty member of the USMC is paid a dismal fraction of the annual salary of an average NFL player, but that’s a rant for another time.]

This is why I’m still a stripper on the weekends, folks. Because I make in a weekend what Stephens pays me in a month. That’s not braggartism, but a testament to exactly how poverty-level consistent my academic pay is. And this isn’t a condemnation of Stephens, but an observation of the larger institutional shift from focus on education to focus on commercial/financial gain. Colleges became businesses instead of idea spaces long before I entered the academic world, but the disparity between the learning part and the business part stretches, an ever-growing chasm, far from the original intent.

The weekend job isn't an exploratory gig for me, not an endeavor in immersion journalism, not an outlet for exhibitionism nor a therapeutic space for me to investigate sexuality. It’s a god damned job, like schlepping drinks, like busing tables, like cleaning office buildings, like retail . . . all of those jobs that supplement the lowly adjunct’s pay. I’m just getting by, just like everyone else.

These are the things I see, friends, from my figurative periscope, deep in the hot trenches. Lately in some ways, my written observations are taking on a life of their own, shaping the path ahead of me, which is terrifying and thrilling at the same time, but I can’t stop telling the truth about my experience. It’s probably because I’m getting older, and don’t give a shit what people think anymore. If people are going to hold court on my being a stripper, but not issue judgment on why anyone has to work as much or as hard as I do just to make ends meet, then they’re assholes I wouldn't associate with anyway. Also, I’m learning people seem to feel good about reading what I write, and the feedback has been overwhelming and inspiring. On days when both jobs make me feel like a slave to my own reality, the writing gig, this thing we writers do, fulfills me in ways no occupation can and I’m grateful for all of the amazing people who've written to me upon reading a post that has resonated with them in some way. So thanks for reading, guys. And thanks for being human beings, which I’m discovering is the most challenging job of them all.