by Faculty
At twenty minutes before dismissal time, I can think of nothing else to say but, “Class is over for today.”
As they all begin to scatter, a tall blonde student with a pigtail coiled on her head like a hat comes forward to stand before my desk. She holds the copy of her just-returned essay by the corners flat against her jeans like an apron.
“I—” Her breath gives out.
I gather that she is disturbed about something.
“I’ve never gotten a C before.”
This is a first draft of the first paper during the first semester for a first-year student. Her sentences seem to have issued from a shredder. She doesn’t know a comma from a period from a semi-colon, a “there” from a “their” from a “they’re.” She writes “would of” and “may of.” But she was “considered an A student” in high school. Hence, her surprise this morning.
“You’ll get to rewrite that. That’s the whole point of this assignment.”
“I have to get at least a B in this class.”
I stack my books on top of each other and put the stack of books on top of my folders. I snatch my pen off the desk and shove it into my breast pocket.
“If I don’t get a B, I’ll lose my funding.”
“You’ll get to rewrite the paper.”
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My teaching gig is part-time, and I’ve been known to work as many as three jobs at once — Emergency Medical Technician for about fifteen years, plasterer and wallpaperer while my spouse still had his historic restoration business, small-scale vegetable and apple farmer, cemetery superintendent at present. My academic CV fits on one side of an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper. When my fiction writing aspirations crashed, I took up old time fiddling. I drink cheap domestic red wine out of a Mason jar with an ice cube in it.
“Adjunct” is the perfectly suitable, adjective-turned-noun describing academic part-timers like me. It sounds like a vestigial body part. Read more »