Recently, Eustace Fairweather, a suffering adjunct teaching in a baking hot trailer out behind the baseball diamond of a community college, wrote the Traveling Online Teacher for advice on how to become a Tourist with Privileges:
This is amazing! I was just running the numbers in my head, trying to figure out how to make a go of it and here you are. I'm working as an adjunct in a junior college in the midwest. No respect, little pay, and more dust and heat than a man should have to put up with. How did you make the leap?
Well, Eustace, I’m nation sorry about your scrofulous circumstances, but the best I can do for you is to point out how difficult it is to see the big picture with all that sweat in your eyes. Let me push aside this plate of Shrimp Remoulade and I’ll try to set you straight.
My first piece of advice to you is to spark up your wardrobe. It’s easy to get where you want to go if you look like you have already arrived at the destination. So, brush those hay seeds out of your hair!
Get yourself down to Brooks Brothers and buy a double-breasted blue blazer with brass buttons, a pair of pearl gray slacks and some decent underwear. Next, get fitted for a pair of leather shoes. I know, Eustace, I know…you’re wondering how you could afford such elegance. The hard truth is that you can’t afford not to dress well if you want to escape the trailer. After all, you will live as a man of leisure after you start teaching online, and there are certain standards you must meet.
Don’t sneer lightly at silk underwear. Be a plunger, Eustace! I’ll let you in on a little secret: I, too, was once a miserable community college adjunct forced to purchase my own textbooks. Oh, the administration said I would be reimbursed…when they damn well got around to it.
This is a chance to regain your self respect, Eustace. Ask yourself if this is any way for an educated man to live the next time the Dean orders you to put a high shine on his wingtips. Ask yourself if there isn’t a better way the next time you hold office hours on the dented hood of your used car.
2 comments:
Rabbi,
Thanks for the personal consultation. I find our chat sessions very informative and your rates very reasonable. I only hope I can continue to afford even this small kindness. Just last week I had three classes lined up. Now, administration gave away one of my classes to a new lecturer and collapsed the two sections into one huge class...42 students in a Mobile classroom.
I applied for a night manager job at a taco stand to make ends meet. Thank god rent is cheap out at the trailer park. The more they push the better your ideas sound. It's just so scary...I don't know the first thing about on line teaching? What do I need to know about the actual work of teaching?
P.S. There isn't a Brooks brothers at the mall, would Men's Wearhouse work?
42 students! Mighty tight quarters, Eustace! How do you do it? Do you stand outside the trailer and shout your lectures through an open window? Old Scratch himself only knows what your students are doing inside the trailer. I imagine they are running wild as March hares, and there is little doubt that your name is being bandied back and forth in a shameful fashion. The problem with your situation is that you are a sharecropper with a business card. As we fondly say in the Deep South, Eustace, that’s a tough frog to swallow.
However, as soon as I finish this plate of Fried Softshell Crab Meuniere Amandine with Corn Maque Choux, I’ll post a possible solution to your legendary travails.
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