Shocking! The blog title "Hell in a Handbasket" is taken. I wonder why? I was born in 1965. How the hell did we end up in this world, especially in this country? I'm just stunned, all the time, and flailing. I'm not waving my arms around like a lunatic, trying to grasp a life raft, but mentally that is exactly how my brain looks these days. I recently listened to the podcast Once Upon A Time at Bennington College and it got my creative juices flowing, albeit it's worn off quickly now that I completed all the episodes. That podcast made writing - long my dream - sound so great again. More important, it made it seem POSSIBLE. Hence this attempt at another blog. Writing is all about...writing, every day. Ugh, it's like a stair master. I sucked at the stair master. OH NO! I just caught myself sitting here trying to be "writerly" when I'm not even making this public so I better just dive in.
I am going to start therapy again because I'm so utterly, completely stuck. I am turning 60, which honestly doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that I'm worried about money, I want to retire, my adult children are not "launched," and most recently, a fantastic business idea I had failed thanks to the bullshit that is social media marketing and stupid people. Yep I said it. Stupid People. Hence the call to the new therapist - I'm just so, so sad. All the time. I'm a cliche. The old lady who can't believe how the world has changed. I need a new vision, and hope that writing this will maybe get me there, as long was I have therapy going hand in hand with the blog.
So what will the focus of this version of Madam Ovary be? Hopefully the beginnings of a funny roman a clef featuring the academic world I live in - that of a community college, that great bastion of democracy designed to combat the war on poverty by providing access to education. Access that then became defined as "online" courses taught by teachers sitting on their laptops at home in their underwear. All of them, you might ask? No but more than you would want to know.
We will begin with some characters and a hint of a story.
Sally McInerney-Candless. Sally is a large woman - tall and well-fed but also athletic and light on her feet. You can tell that Sally has always lived in this particular body, towering over boys in high school while slowly developing her self-concept around the idea that tiny girls in tank tops giggling around a locker was not ever going to be her milleaux. I adored her for her genuinely high self-regard, the rather randy sex-life she shared with her equally large husband Jack, and her utter commitment to speaking the truth. Truth-telling is not exactly the hallmark of academic life when it comes to addressing problems. Sally always says: Why get tenure and not use it to speak truth to power? She's also whipsmart, funny and a helluva teacher. When I get down, I hover outside her classroom for inspiration, listening to her booming voice and sneaking peeks at her rapt students. The woman teaches history, a required subject despised by students in general, but they are eating out of her hand. Speaking of hands, they are also always raised in Sally's classes. No social anxiety here, folks. That is her magic.
Equally skilled in teaching, albeit in a very different Waspy and petite style, is Amanda Winthrop Jafar. No matter how self-serving and shady I find a colleague in their "faculty" life, I always give leeway if you are a good teacher. Now if you are self-serving, power-hungry, insecure and a snake and you can't teach either? Watch out. I will find a way but not an evil way. Just a way to make sure that you do not puff up like a pseudo intellectual Michelin man from Ghostbusters, stomping around meetings that are already ridiculous, making them longer by sharing "just one thought." Amanda is clever and yes, I mean it in the way we often refer to women as clever in that she can be dangerous and sly. She has one fatal flaw - a need for power and it's admirable how hard she tries to hide it. I really mean that. it's almost as if she herself is torn up about it and wishes she were nicer. Here's the thing. I would respect Amanda more if she would just let that inner beast out. She is the polar opposite of Sally in terms of authenticity. Even when she tries desperately to be just "one of us," using some profanity here and there, making fun of her tres-chic uncircumcised and diverse husband, a sliver of desperation always shines through. Amani Jafar is, wait for it, a doctor. "He had no choice," explained Amanda, "given his upbringing." I remember her telling me this at an event in honor of Muslim women. Her blonde bob was tucked into a hajib, demonstrating unity with women under Taliban rule. I had forgotten my hajib, along with my awareness of the event, and had actually just wandered in for the free cookies. Amanda is above all, a "unionist." So get the fuck out of her way when it comes to protecting "her members." The problem is Amanda's members can be really shitty to students, greedy, and shady "AF" as my students say. She's like a mom with a toddler who bites. Horrified but defensive.
I'll get back to Amanda but the bigger question is WHY OH WHY, weird colleagues, did you want to be a teacher? Okay, let's say the original plan was to be a real-live "professor," - a dream born of watching countless movies featuring oaky auditoriums with mini stages and multiple blackboards designed to slide over one another always providing enough room to "profess" yourself. We all saw those movies and hopefully were further inspired by our own college experiences. I know that stuff inspired me. Brideshead Revisited? That was my dream life. I, however, was too poor to ever even consider getting a doctorate or time traveling to Oxford in the 1920s, so when I found out community college teaching required only a Master's degree, I was in heaven.
The problem is there aren't enough jobs for those who envisioned "professing" in the oak-chaired auditoriums, so they often end up at a two year college so they can eat and procreate. Their doctoral degree actually puts them at the head of the resume line at a two year school. (More on how stupid that is later but hey, community colleges are often the little engine that could and their heads get turned by fancy titles). Somewhere the Zeuses of the higher education Mount Olympus started messing with hiring at community colleges by ranking PhD candidates higher than those with a Masters, forgetting that those with a Masters are so damn happy to just teach that they will serve their students well.
I will never forget having our "top" candidate for an English position interview with us. Yes, he had a doctorate, but after staying at the crappy low-end hotel within walking distance of the college and flying across the country to boot, he entered our shabby conference room already looking green. We began our questions, he spaced out after the third one, and abruptly said, "excuse me, I need to use the restroom." Reality had set in. It washed over him - that we would be his colleagues, that this convoluted piece of student writing we were asking him to pretend to critique was an actual sample from a real student, that this empty and decidedly ugly county building - all of this would be his ivory tower. POOF! Dreams up in smoke. He rushed through the remaining few questions and damn near ran out of the room.
Sally was on that search committee. She leaned back from the conference table, exhaled heavily and said, "Gee, was it something we said?" She was sporting Crocs, hot pink, with tube socks. We all roared, baffled and somewhat relieved that this top candidate had tumbled off the list. We had a moment of grace there and could have done the right thing, which was hire a younger adjunct with "just" a Masters who had a great rapport with the student. Sure, he had a silly ponytail but he could teach and he would only get better with time. That certain gift of true teachers - ephemeral at times but grounded in a love of learning and a desire to forever be in school - was already in his pocket. All he needed to do was marinate in a classroom for a few years and NOT TOUCH THE FEMALE STUDENTS.
Alas, it was not meant to be. The reason was a grotesque and much older man, with a doctorate and a far less glorious ponytail, Dr. Richard O'Sullivan. Just to the left of ponytail was a chip on his shoulder, the size of his time in Vietnam. Deadly boring and barely able to garner enough students to run his Literature of the Bible course every semester, Professor Ponytail didn't want to give the adjunct a chance. No, we must get a scholar! Preferably without a competing ponytail. We ended up choosing a narcissistic nightmare who hid his true colors behind a folksy manner and previous tenure at a midwestern community college. His name was Doug Winters. Within a year of his arrival, even Professor Ponytail realized we made a horrible mistake. I often wonder if the profession attracts narcissists, what with the title and all. Ironically, Doug did a great demo lesson oozing with empathy and erudition. But as soon as he hit the three year mark, when it was too late to be rid of him, the truth did out.
Sally observed him first and found the lesson convoluted. Professor Ponytail volunteered to be a mentor but being deadly boring himself, was unable to see that same quality in Doug. Each year the same feedback was given and the following year, Doug whipped out the same Rube Goldberg lesson on poetry. The inevitable Student complaints rolled in and of course, ratemyprofessors.com outed him as the egotist he was, obsessed with iambic pentameter and disgusted with his students. They bumped him into an administrative position, trying to minimize the classroom damage but he fucked that up as well. It seemed like the perfect fit for Doug -- coordinating the honors program -- since his elitism was so pronounced. Sadly, he disagreed with something the administration did and in a fit of pique, totally lacking in self-awareness, he gave up the honors position to "make a point." Nobody noticed or cared. That meant back into the classroom to engage in sarcasm and snotty rhetoric about how hopeless his students were.
"Talk about the ultimate fucking bait and switch," Sally said to anyone who would listen. We wore Doug's hiring hire like a scarlet letter - everyone on that search committee was ashamed that we had unleashed the Kraken on our first generation, underprepared and baffled students. I wondered aloud if we could employ psychological testing as part of the hiring process but HR shut that down. In one year alone, three male narcissists stomped around the campus raising hell, complaining, NOT teaching and making anyone in their path miserable. "Teeny weenies?" Jillian Forbes suggested at lunch one day. We noted that all three had extraordinarily large heads compared to their bodies and were on the shorter side. "Napoleon complex?" offered Jillian's bestie from Psychology, Sanjara Goldstein. Professor Ponytail opined, "It's the sin of tenure..." and we all looked at him like the devil he was. Jillian, who like myself was hired with a Masters and had advocated for the younger ponytail to be hired, stunned us all with what she said next. Jillian was incredibly smart, hugely empathic and a great composition teacher. She in fact had played the "role of the student" during Doug's teaching demo and done so with just the right amount of angst, thinly veiled resentment, and insecurity. Whyyyyy is my paper covered in red ink? she whined, waving it in the air during her faux student conference with Doug.
"Hey, silly Ponytail guy (she called him Rick, actually, we all did), I know you're getting up there but has dementia set in because we hired Dougie the Dick because of you. Remember? Remember hot Ponytail kid who the students loved but didn't meet "your" standards? Well he's full time at Much Better University now and wouldn't deign to sit in on any of your sad, camo-veteran poetry readings." Sanjara grabbed my thigh under the table, hard. Jillian glared. Rick said, "I have no idea what you're talking about," and shuffled off in his pilly sweater and wide whale corduroys.
