Losantiville Lines: The Keys To The Kingdom

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. - Arthur Carlson, WKRP IN CINCINNATI

Probably the most succinct explanation I've ever heard or read of what's wrong with this place. Me, in relation to the quote above.

Being caught here as I was, over the weekend -- between illness, the weather, and the spinelessness of the Tennessee Division of Greyhound Buslines, I was left to cough up a lung and ponder the universe in the shadow of Porkopolis. This gave me a chance to try and get through a smallish pile of student writing that must be returned tomorrow when I exchange it for a fresh pile -- the unending cycle that is the educational machine.

Thank Crikey I'm not interested in being hired full time. This sentiment is not a reflection of how I feel about the students in my classes, as much as a recognition that other than a few new bells and whistles, the institution of higher education is no different than it was when I left (translate: ran screaming) from ASU in December 2009.

Perfect example: I received a circulating email in response to concerns raised by part-time Lit and Language faculty to the current chair in meetings scheduled for the purpose of airing such concerns and offering suggestions to improve the plight/make more comfortable those who do most of the work for little pay and no real recognition... since other than teaching classes that tenured faculty refuse to teach, part-timers do nothing to make the institution look good.

We are not a marketable bunch. Though a few of us are, I dare say, reasonably attractive.

I should note that I did not attend either Open Door session, which were scheduled on a Tuesday and Thursday... days I am not on campus. (They are, coincidentally, days that most part-timers are not on campus either. Draw your own conclusions, Dear Readers.)

The primary issue raised, according the email, was office space. Part-timers share the same corral on the 5th floor we shared when I taught at NKU in '04-'05. And apparently, those who went to the open door talks mentioned space as a priority.

It was not mentioned in the email, but I do wonder if anyone brought up access to health insurance. NKU DOES allow part-timers access to the institution's health insurance plan -- after 3 years of consecutive employment. Which means, if you're actually interested in having a full-time job, that you're pretty enough to screw but not to take to a family reunion. (Keep in mind that it is damn difficult to stay consecutively employed as a part-time instructor. That means you have at least a class every term... including summer, when enrollments are low, and spring, when a large number of First Year students run screaming from college campuses.)

Of course, the Chair has no say over what the Bean Counters in the administration bunker do. And a potential for access is better than no access at all, right? Carrot by any other name....

The solution to the aforementioned space issue? Give every part-timer his or her own key. This way, I suppose, it will feel like we really have an office and are taken seriously as professionals. Which, of course, is utter bullshit.

I should mention again, however, that I am less interested in being afforded the label of "professional" than I am in being treated like a human being and not a cog.

I got a set of keys instead.

I should also mention that every part-timer was going to be issued a set of keys anyway.

The solution, as I see it, is to have armed guards on campus.

Because lately that's the solution to all educational problems, and a blog is no place to think outside the box.

On a tangentially related note, Mount Carroll crank and all around lousy person Nina Cooper is running for City Clerk. She has built a very patriotic looking website to assert her candidacy, which ten people in town will see. (Five of them might actually vote for her; but she is one of them, and the other two are her co-hort cranks, Alderpersons Bob "The Amoral Pontificator" Sisler and Doris "I'm Not Dead I'm Just Plotting" Bork. The other two I'm giving her for kindness and statistical accuracy.)

Location:Cincinnati, OH

Losantiville Lines: Professionalism and the Baboon

You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't.- John Prine

Today being the celebration of Martin Luther King Day, it behooves us to take pause and consider the fact that right now, somewhere in America, some disgruntled old white guy, afeared and worried about the decline of America in the world, is right this minute talking about the days when President's Day was a holiday and there was no day set aside to publicly remember a dissenter and rabble rouser who had the temerity to suggest that all people are equal and that social change does not have to occur with the barrel of a gun pointed in someone's face.

And being as yesterday was a Federal Holiday -- and it was, even before Barack Obama was elected President, in spite of what your skinhead uncle might tell you -- I was not required to be on the penitentiary style campus of Northern Kentucky University... which means I have spent the long weekend across and down the dirty sacred river in Louisville.

If there are any ENG 291 students reading this blog... though I am reasonably sure there aren't ... you have no need to fear. I will be back in town in plenty of time for class tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.

Last week was my first week back on the other side of the Big Desk in some time, and of course, it went off with all the help that Murphy's Law could give. The bus didn't stop to pick me up on the first day, the copies of my syllabus weren't ready, the book I picked to use was not available in the bookstore, and I had no access to the campus intraweb because my presence had not quite been made official.

(That would later be temporarily complicated by the fact that I was still In The System from my last stint at NKU back in 2004-2005. The Machine never forgets, Dear Readers. It all really does go down in your permanent record.)

My two classes meet at 8:00 and 9:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. That's 8:00 and 9:00 IN THE GAWD AWFUL MORNING. I gravitate towards morning classes for two very important reasons:

1. a job, like medicine, is best when it is gotten over with early; and
2. no one wants them, which tends to put me in better position to pick up work... when I need to.

The students in these classes -- at least the 8AM class -- are probably there because every other section that fit in their schedules was full. And also because required general ed classes, like medicine, are best when they are gotten over with early.

Being back at NKU is interesting, not only in the sense of seeing what hasn't changed, but in noticing what has.

For example: me.

when I taught at NKU in '04, I was hungry for a full time teaching gig. A year into my second marriage, we had moved from Knoxville, where I could only find work as a mall janitor under a despotic and small-minded supervisor, Fat Mike. (Fat was not the Christian name given him by his parents; but I suspect they rethought that after he ate them and as they digest slowly over a thousand years.) I wanted to be a team player, but I was confident that I knew what I knew, that I was given the best education that looming lifelong debt could buy, and that my mission was clear.

I was young, alright, Young in the ways of the machine, even though I'd had plenty of experience that should have made me otherwise. But while it may be the mark of a fool to not learn from your mistakes, it's the mark of true insight to recognize that you have, in the past, been a dumbass.

I've also been recalling, in bits and pieces, my first departure from NKU. The then Writing Program Director, now Interim Chair, had put up with me as long as he could. Not only was I canceling class early when everyone was actually finished with what they had to do (stretching a class to an appropriate length is what passes for consumer care in higher education... making sure that students/consumers feel that the exorbitant amount of tuition they pay is justified by the amount of time they sit not paying attention in class... but I reeked of a lack of professionalism that rubbed the then Writing Program Director the wrong way. I never dressed office casual. I was never clean-shaven, and rarely keep up on my hair cut regimen.

[NOTE: CLEARLY THESE THINGS HAVEN'T CHANGED.]

I was, of course, operating on a basic mis-assumption... that I would be judged as an educator by the improvements made by my students over the course of the class. Yes, yes. Silly, I know. But I was young. And a fool.

When I left I turned in my key... to the Part-timer corral, and the copy room, I believe... and left. Upon my return, I discovered that my keys were never returned to the key keeping authority.

Add that to the fact that I was still in the computer system as being a sometimes employee, and you get a notion as to how things are dealt with in higher education.

Being back, and being free of the urge for full-time employment does have perks. And so does being able to learn from my own experience. While I am, I hope, free of the hubris that drove me in my early 30's, I am not -- as I near my 40th turn around the sun -- particularly worried about coming off as a professional. I don't want to be thought of a professional. I don't want to act like a professional.

Professionalism kills art, murders intellect, and scars the soul. I hope I still have it in me to be a good teacher, and that I can convey the importance of writing and critical thinking, even at the undignified hours of 8 and 9 in the morning.