From My Adjuncting Diary
by Gordon Haber
Adjunctivitis, my novella about an adjunct desperately seeking health insurance in Los Angeles, is for sale as an Amazon Kindle Single here. If you don’t own a Kindle, you can get a free reading app here.
I
I had a conversation with a student writing about Bedouins in Israel.
“In Bedouin culture,” she wrote, “it’s okay to steal.”
I asked her if she had any direct experience of this.
“No.”
Had she heard of anyone who had direct experience of this.
“No.”
Had she read a newspaper article about it.
“No.”
So then how did she now?
“Everybody knows,” she said.
II
P. comes into class with a radio(!) blaring Alex Jones. Now I get why it’s been impossible to teach him about reliable sources.
I worry about P.’s mental state.
He missed a class because he was “up all night worrying about the tsunami.”
When he didn’t send me an outline, it was because “The radiation scare put behind schedule. I was putting plastic on all of my windows.”
III
T. is a charming kid with braces (an indication that someone loves him). But he can barely write a sentence and he says he can’t afford the handbook.
I lend him my extra one, give him specific readings, tell him to come back with questions. He doesn’t come up with any so I make him stay after every class to work on his writing. After a couple of weeks, it improves.
Just before the deadline, he drops the class.