Tales of an Adjunct Part 1: Where’s Your Faculty ID?

Driving onto campus, I ask myself, “Why am I here?” and answer, “Because I’m desperate; I’ve moved to this town because of my husband’s job. Two weeks before the start of the fall semester, I agreed to teach three art history classes because the art historian quit unexpectedly; $1,500 per class. What was I thinking?”

I walk into the faux Brutalist art building and think, “Nothing inspires creativity like the moral seriousness and vast expanses of steel and reinforced concrete.” Opening the door to the slide library, the smells of rotting plant material; musty, decades-old ARTNews and Art In America magazines; and the sweet scent of peppermint herbal tea overwhelm me. The aesthetically unappealing, mauve-colored walls visually assault. Couldn’t an office located in an art building be painted something a bit livelier and more contemporary or, at least, more inspirational?

The former art historian’s office was in the back of the slide library and is now mine. It’s my first real office (for the last year, my office was my car). The blank walls are littered with holes, and I imagine a sea of Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition posters. The notion annoys me. Why is it that Georgia O’Keeffe is the only woman artist people remember? But I guess I’ll take O’Keeffe’s work over the thinly veiled soft porn of Renoir any day.

Whoever the faculty member was, I speculate they congratulated themselves on their fabulous sense of style. It’s a tale as old as time. One can often spot an art historian a mile away at a College Art Association conference trying a little too hard to be “arty”—layers of black fabric and clunky museum gift shop jewelry or layers of hand-dyed fabrics from Africa, India or Japan bedecked with chunky, culturally appropriated jewelry. Severely cropped hair. Little or no makeup except a shock of lipstick. Male art historians? Few and far between, but if someone is sporting a tweed jacket and a bow tie, it would be an art historian, architect or attorney. I am not an art historian. I’m a studio artist with an M.F.A.—the terminal degree no one respects. My look is “artist trying not to care what other people think”; “I’m saving my creativity for my art” (i.e., I’m poor, and every dime I have I spend on art supplies).

As days pass, I often look with bleary eyes at the sturdy, coffee-stained wooden desk piled with books and legal pads scribbled with notes. I mutter, “How will I get through this material in time for class? What the hell am I going to talk about? Which slides do I need? Where are the Greek and Roman art slides in the slide library? Is the slide librarian in yet? Do they have the slides for the plates from this textbook?”

Ancient Greece: Parthenon—pediment (side note: talk about the British stealing the sculptures), entablature, triglyph, metope and colonnade. Types of capitals: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. Ancient Rome: Pantheon—oculus, coffers, rotunda, cornice, portico. Colosseum—amphitheater, barrel vault, arcade, velarium and the cats. Yes, talk about all the cats roaming around. Throwing slides together and saying just ahead of the syllabus becomes my life.

Most days, I stop for lunch around noon. As I lock the office door, I often notice all the little bits of Scotch tape layered there. I imagine it once collaged with museum postcards … Rodin’s The Thinker, Michelangelo’s David (detail of crotch), DaVinci’s Mona Lisa, Duchamp’s Fountain, Dürer’s Self Portrait, Kruger’s I Shop, Therefore I Am, and a smattering of others by Munch, Modigliani and Magritte. Feeling judgmental and bitter, I think, “Why couldn’t they be bothered to take the tape off the door?” I often conjure the postcards being ripped off the door in a fit of rage after not getting tenure or some other grievance or perceived slight. I can hear the associated rant in my head of the disgruntled, “They don’t deserve me. I’m a brilliant Michelangelo scholar. I’ll show them. I’ll get a Fulbright. No—a MacArthur! That’s it. And in my acceptance speech, I’ll mention every other institution but this one.”

It’s fall. I walk across the university (not so green) green on the way to the dining hall. The stoners are playing hacky sack, and some women are lying out in bathing suits. My internal dialogue persists, “Aren’t they worried someone has let their dog poop on the green? There are so many dead patches of grass. It must be because of dog poop or pee. Gross. They are lying on dog poop. Jesus. Dog poop!” From the corner of my eye, I spy some administrator types, a photographer and three students near a big oak tree. It must be for an admissions photo shoot—your typical “three around a tree” nonsense.

I fall in line at the dining hall behind hungover students ordering greasy pizza and burgers. The smell of cigarettes, stale beer and sex emanates. It then commingles with the scent of patchouli oil attempting to mask spilled bong water. I order a Diet Coke and a turkey and provolone sub with lettuce, tomato and mayo. When I get to the checkout, the cashier asks for my student ID. I say, “No, I’m faculty. I get a faculty discount. I’m paying with cash.” She looks over the top of her glasses skeptically and asks for my faculty ID. I also almost spout, “Why would I fucking lie for 50 fucking cents?” Instead, I just silently hand her my ID and a five-dollar bill.

People don’t think adjuncts are real faculty. They are paid like a sweatshop worker—by the piece. Or, in this case, by the course. Paid dirt. No benefits. I always feel like some 19th-century itinerant portrait photographer driving around in a covered wagon making tintypes of soldiers and deceased infants. Ugh. That’s awful. Worse is the reality. Imagine being thought of as Mr. Haney from Green Acres trying to make a living by peddling one pot or pan at a time from a dilapidated truck. That’s about right. A “gen-u-ine” professor. They are always showing up when you need a class taught.

Also, I’m tired of being hassled because I still look like a student and not a real faculty member. Yesterday, an officious librarian wouldn’t let me put books on reserve; she said, “You need to get your professor to do it.” When I said I was the professor, she asked for my ID. I didn’t have it with me, so she refused. I had to return to my office, then return to the library and put the books on reserve before students started complaining about being unable to read the assigned Marshall McLuhan text. More internal dialogue, “Why bother? Medium. Message. Po-tay-to. Po-tot-o. The students aren’t going to understand it anyhow. Then I’ll have to fail them. I loathe failing students. I obsess about my student evaluations. Will they be crap?”

Back in the art building, I meander through the rabbit warren–like halls. Walking by the overtly sexualized female nude sculpture (arched back, no pubes, small boobs) by one of the male faculty members, I continue my internal dialogue: “It’s so sexist and dumb. She has one hand on her breast, pinching a nipple.” I roll my eyes back so hard, I’m worried they’ll get stuck. “Ugh. Give me a break.”

One day, I overheard the sculpture professor in his office asking a female student to be a model for his nude drawing class. He says, “Just tell your parents this is an art class. It is about form in space. Nudity is truth. It pays $15 an hour. You’ll have privacy to get ready. You can change your clothes in my office. I have a robe right here that you can wear. No problem. Let’s get a drink, and I can tell you all about Rodin and Camille Claudel. She was his muse and an artist. You could be the next Camille Claudel.”

Read my thoughts. “Right. What a shameless prick. He won’t tell her that Rodin was abusive. Asshole. Wait—$15 an hour? That is about what I make. Maybe I should be a nude model. It would be easier, but I’d have to listen to that guy more.”

Up next: Tales of an Adjunct Part 2: This Isn’t Notre Dame!