BY APRIL FORD

I’ve been on the job market since January. That’s no time at all in academe time, and already two-thirds of the applications I’ve sent out, at an average of ten per week, have met form-letter deaths. My favorite rejection so far addresses me as “Sir Ford,” and closes with “good luck out there.” All that’s missing is an exclamation point. I continue to check AWP, HigherEdJobs, and MLA daily, but now just the idea of relocating to another state to teach a 4/4 load (plus advising, plus service) for a year has lost its appeal. Prior to January, I dabbled in the market every spring and fall, in hopes of landing a fellowship or short-term lectureship at some recognized institution; I wanted experience, stimulation, and, yes, respite from teaching section after section of Introduction to Creative Writing at my current place of employment. I’ve become something of a General Education specialist, you might say, which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy teaching 100-level courses, but when that’s all my department can offer me, and when a search committee at another college asks me during a phone interview why I haven’t taught any upper-level courses in seven years…

Before January, I didn’t need to be on the job market. Now I do. I’m in the process of getting divorced, which will cost me, among other things, the “privileged” adjunct status I’ve held as the spouse of a tenured professor. In a few months I’ll lose my health, dental, and vision benefits as well, so when I say I’ve been on the market since January, I mean I’ve been on it as hard as anyone desperate to sustain a teaching career in academia (don’t get me started on the supposed perks, like living-wage pay). It’s been tough on my eyes, spending hours upon hours completing generic online job portal forms in order to gain access to the actual applications, but what’s been dragging me down the most is the realization that seven years of teaching mostly introductory-level courses for the same institution is proving to be a blemish rather than an embellishment on my resumé. The relentlessly positive course evaluations and personal comments from students, high praise from colleagues and anyone else who has seen me in action, and the Pushcart Prize recently awarded to my fiction don’t seem to be keeping me afloat in the candidate slush pile, either.

If it sounds like I’m trumpeting my accomplishments, damn right I am. But I’m not overplaying a single note. I’ve worked tirelessly to succeed as an author while also being a thorough and accessible professor to multiple and large groups of writing students every semester, and I contribute regularly to the literary community at-large and to my campus community (I have served this latter freely and for free since 2010); and by not getting out of adjunctemia sooner, by not pursuing the “true” terminal degree for artists seeking stable teaching positions in higher education, I have quite possibly committed career suicide. I wish I could have foreseen this eventuality, not held out hope that my department Chairs and colleagues would finally get the okay from administration to create a full-time position for me. But maybe instead of faulting my present employer, I should fault my silly dream of having both a marriage and a career. Where might I be now if I had said “no” to an institution that doesn’t appear to value the struggles or successes of its shamefully under-compensated contingent faculty? Here’s why I am where I am now, and I apologize if you’ve heard this story before:

In 2009, my partner accepted a tenure-track job in Oneonta. We had met in Montreal, my home, and as the end of my partner’s limited-term appointment loomed before us, so did the conversation many academic couples are forced to have: So! Whose career are we going to focus on first? Being that I was an aspiring writer, and relatively unencumbered, we agreed to put my partner’s career first. I appreciated the paucity of tenure-track offers, plus I was 27 and eager for a radically new life. While my partner was off professing to the great minds of tomorrow, I could write all day in our home office, or bus to New York City to network and procure freelance gigs. My partner promised me the best possible life he could give me in a rural college town overwhelmed by bars and pizza joints, and he did magnificently; six months after I arrived in Oneonta, however, I felt isolated and unhappy, and there wasn’t a decent job prospect for me in sight. I also felt out of place among our new friends, who happened to be my spouse’s colleagues. I spent many a Friday night faculty happy hour outside, smoking by myself while the professors basked in their complaints about students and administrators, and gossiped about other professors.

Within a year of coming to Oneonta, I was teaching French language courses at the college, and pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing (I had opted for a low-residency program so I wouldn’t have to be in a long-distance marriage). The adjuncting and MFA-ing helped me feel more connected to my partner and our social life. As the years passed and I became a published author, I gained some honors and awards for my writing, and settled into a comfortable routine of teaching two or three courses per semester (at $2700 – $3000 per 3 s.h.). I guess we all hoped this would be enough for me—until my career as a best-selling author of literary fiction kicked off, of course. My “fortuitous life,” someone once called it, as the spouse of a tenured professor, and as a writer whose partner encouraged me to put writing before revenue, meant we didn’t have to concern ourselves with my non-career prospects in academia.

No adjunct wants to come across as petulant and entitled, hurt colleagues who really have championed her, or piss off the wrong administrator. If there’s anything fortuitous about my situation now, it’s that I have this forum where I can talk openly about concerns many adjuncts feel compelled to suppress. As I mentioned earlier, the prospect of relocating for a temporary position is unappealing at this point. Maybe I’ll do a career overhaul, return to Montreal, waitress at some dive bar with black lights on its ceiling so I can have time to write the next great Canadian–American novel (which I have written, incidentally, and is presently under consideration with literary agents in Toronto and New York City). My immediate goal, the only one I have any illusion of control over, is to keep my spirits up as the rejections continue to lumber in, and share what it’s like for “terminal” adjuncts to be on the job market. Instead of being snarky about a troubling issue of national scope, I could publish stats that drive home the staggering reality that higher education in North America runs on adjuncts, but we know these numbers already, right? And right now, I have hardly enough motivation and optimism to keep myself running. aprilfordauthor.com