Adjunct Riot

Is it possible to see people grow right before your eyes? I have to celebrate the little victories I have seen in my class's writing and behavior. They can't get away now--I've seen what they can do, and I'm going to expect it of them. They definitely deserve more credit than they are getting from life. This week in their journals, I had them write descriptions of a place on campus that they frequent, and then a description of a stranger or friend that they find there. My students have no idea just how elegantly their minds work--They blew me away, and left me cackling and gasping for breath right in the middle of the Writing Lab. A few of my favorites: For laughs... "...I am sitting across from a young man who is working on his lap top. He looks like he is in his early twenties and has not shaved for a couple days. My first impression of him is that he seems focused. He barely looks up from his computer, and when he does, it is to look at his book. He has ...

"There are a lot of young women in my office. It seems as if everyone has had a baby recently. All the baby presents cost me a fortune." John Langan, English Brushup , Chapter 3: Subject-Verb Agreement

Nothing gets your mojo going like that handsome devil Johannes Brahms, Hungarian Dance No. 5 .

"Live the question." -Rilke   A mentor is a pretty cool thing to have. I have one that likes to complain about his student's inability to understand prepositions ("They have the preposition sheet right in front of them! What do they mean 'Slow down'?!?!?!?") and one that, well, that's always been good for a thought-shock quote like the one above. Professor M. taught me how to write poetry when I went to school here at the community college. "You made the first cardinal mistake," he said when I came to work the first day. "You came back." Mea culpa, Phil, mea culpa. I proceeded to ask him the ever-so enlightened question, "How do I teach them, Phil?" Though they are "reprobate little bastards," they aren't idiots. Don't let them know you like the novel they're reading for class, because then they will hate it on principle. During class discussions, don't give them the choice. Th...

Four months ago, they were highschoolers. That's why they come off as...a little bit dumb. I wonder, because of the above fact, if I'll just be spending a very lonely semester pouring my intellectual wine into old wineskins, only to have them break and so on and so forth. Well, they'll break alright, and I'll be the one doing the breaking. These bad habits they have of not taking responsibility for their education outside of our fifty minute classes are not going to fly. They just aren't, gosh darnit. I won't let them, even if it means failing every last sorry one of them. (And they will fail this next assignment if they don't get their tushies logged on to their email accounts.) I have this dream that involves, as we read The Alchemist,  introducing them to the joys of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights triptych of which I am so fond. After all, a little exploration into alchemy and art history didn't hurt this English/Visual Studies major. In ...

"There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction." --Salvador Dali

Now don't start expecting daily posts, because that will most certainly not be the case...Most of the time. Today I started my second job, that of Tutor in the Writing Lab. Which means, at least for the first week, I am virtually getting paid to blog in an empty room, though (and my heart swells with pride at this) one of my students is sitting in the corner diligently working on his grammar homework. Bless his heart and his slow typing fingers. What I wanted to write about today had something to do with the glories of sitting barefoot in the quad, catching rays while a cool breeze blew over the fountain. But what I've really gotten stuck on is what must be the cross of every young adjunct (this one being an almost-twenty-two year old), being mistaken for a student. I find this humorous, and find myself yearning just a wee bit for the old college days when I got to be the one absorbing wisdom rather than trying to come up with it. Though I will stress that I dress con...

My name is Kelsea Jones, and I'm a first year English adjunct. (Hi Kelsea.) If you willingly voiced the above parenthetical in the traditional AA meeting voice, good on you, because that's more interaction that I got from my students today. Granted, I do teach College Prep Composition. If that sounds condescending, I'll say this in my defense: I tried to give them more credit that this. I actively tried. I was a little worried at 7:55 when no one was coming in to take their seats. I went out into the hall to check on them. There they were! Waiting for someone to unlock the door...which wasn't locked. Mental note: Sheep need more careful shepherding, apparently. Once I got them in the room and in their seats, things went smoothly, more or less. We wrote 2-3 sentences about ourselves (and only had two students refuse to do it), introduced ourselves, and read through the syllabus. Here I think I lost them (my fault). Syllabi proved to be a departure from high sc...