lumière des étoiles

come tumbling, spilling out like waves
2004-06-06 10:00 p.m.

My brain is sacked, completely empty. It's an in-between time, and I wish I knew what was behind and what is to come.

The auto-pilot momentum with work I'm so infamous for has stalled; I've become extremely cerebral in the last two weeks and I don't quite understand why. It's like I've caught an illness I'm not quite sure I want to recover from.

Perhaps it was the banner that hung over Voorhees Mall at Rutgers NB during the Commencement which exclaimed: PART-TIME FACULTY TEACH MORE EARNING LESS! that got me thinking about what an exploitive machine the university is. Or perhaps it was the admin's attempts to pay me less than my usual per-class rate because I'm under-enrolled by a student. Casually explaining that I wasn't offered more money last semester when they OVER ENROLLED my class by FIFTEEN STUDENTS seems to have made that idea go away. That my point was taken with a smile and a "I see" doesn't make me any less wary, and I haven't let my defenses down.

So suddenly I've been analyzing my position, thinking about my options, and driving home from class each day thinking the communists are right - capitalists have designed such an ingenious system. At the university, keeping a pool of poorly paid, under-funded and overworked faculty scrambling for jobs suits their purposes well; full time, tenured faculty don't have to (and don't want to) teach, they can research and make a good name for the school while pt faculty do most of the labor-intensive work that makes the school function. Paying part-time faculty more (and perhaps allowing them to afford health care when they need it via benefits options) would lessen pt teachers' needs to overload themselves with classes just to make due, and though you'd have better quality education and happier faculty, the uni would have to find and pay even more pt's to teach those extra classes that pt's normally "hoard" for fear of low income.

It's pretty sad when some people I work with are considering taking additional jobs at Starbucks because they provide their workers with benefits after working a mere 20 hour week.

With a disgusting taste in my mouth, I've tried to get through this first week back at school. My first day back brought politics, politics, and more politics, with a director suggesting I express my interest to a certain dean in a position that is part administrative and part teaching. Um, would I get paid more for that? Already dubious of my esteemed employer, I'm afraid it might expect me to take a job that's double my current work-load for around the same pay, simply because it's been deemed more "secure".

Thanks to my position at another school, I'm not that desperate. I do often find myself wondering what I would do if I didn't have it, though, if I didn't have health benefits or if I were a single parent or something. I suppose I'd have to find some other form of income, but doesn't it seem backward somehow that I, in a sense, would be "punished" for wanting to stick out the current situation in the interest of furthering my education?

It's not impossible for a school dripping with money, for a school which pays it's Football coach and president over half a million dollars a year, to raise pt faculty salaries by a thousand bucks OR give some form of subsidized health benefits package. If a lot of the no-name "Bob's Colleges" can do so, than an enormous school that employs over a hundred thousand people and has corporate and state money falling out of the ceiling can also do so. The scary thing? Talking to a few people about this this week has revealed that my employer "pays well", comparatively, per class. I suppose I should feel lucky.

It's sad that I know PhDs who LIE about their degrees so they won't be "overqualified" for jobs they need.

I don't know why I should be shocked anymore about our country's priorities. I had some wonderful long conversations with people this weekend about that very subject, and because I could do so removed from home, it seems I emerged with some clarity.

We went to visit my brother in law this weekend, who lives near Mystic, Connecticut. It's beautiful there - I was so biased by the Danbury area when my brother lived there that I had written Conn. off a few years back, mistakenly. I never realized that the parts in the north along the coast are so pastoral and historically unspoiled, and that the pace is slow and calming. A weekend away, together, was the jolt that I needed to come out of my head, to let all that I was thinking come tumbling out over several glasses of wine and long strolls along Mystic river.

I thought extensively, in that outward, healthy, problem-solving way, and took long breaks even from that coming back home down the Merit parkway just a few hours ago. Steve and I talked about the newest Harry Potter movie, which we saw at midnight Thursday evening/Friday morning. I'll hold off with my remarks until it's been out for some time, because I'd really hate to alter or ruin it for anyone. I'll say this much: I have absolutely no idea what most critics are talking about when they say it's the "best one yet" or "finally, a film that, unlike the first two, isn't just a boring misrepresentation of Rowling's work". Um - "boring"?... that's not what the critics said about the old Harry Potters when they first came out. Tres fickle! I think it's just "in" to be all moonie over Curon, the new director. Well I didn't much see what all the fuss over "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (also Curon) was either. So there. If the newest Harry Potter is better at all, it's because Rowling's book was.

But we didn't dwell on all that, we talked instead about what we'd teach at Hogwart's school. I decided I'd teach "The Gender of Wizardry" and "The Rhetoric of the Craft". Steve is still thinking about what he'd teach, but I know he'd make a really good quidditch coach. He's always been a good athlete.

Yes, it was a long drive.

I somehow managed to twist my ankle this morning. Perhaps Steve and I shouldn't have been playing on the stairs. I'm off it put it up, drink some tea, and relax on my couch. I've been in my office, writing for an hour, and I miss Steve.

xoxo,