I would love to meet with you but I cannot because of job insecurity.
Besides [college omitted], I work at two other colleges. At the moment I’m teaching a total of 7 classes with around 200 students (three of the classes are within the CUNY system and are all here at [college omitted]). I have no time for much of anything beyond teaching, preparing lesson plans, and grading. Since the beginning of this term, I work 7 days a week putting in typically 8 to 12 hours a day. For one particular day, I am going from 7am to 9pm.
I took on this ridiculous amount of classes because I cannot know what to expect from semester to semester. I have not heard from one of the schools I teach for about the Spring semester at all yet. Another school, while I have a contract, cannot be counted on either. While they usually give me a new class every three months, there have been times when, with no explanation, I have received none. Even when I do get classes from them, they don’t hire faculty; they hire freelance consultants. This means I do not get paid until the end of the class and then only per student. I also know that I will not get another class from [college omitted] for the spring term until the end of Jan. That means I have to survive a month with reduced, if any, income. Even when/if I do get some classes in the Spring, I don’t know how many. Assuming I can wrangle enough classes to survive through the Spring term, I will then have the issue of how to survive through the summer. Since I’m a relatively new adjunct at [college omitted], I know that I will not get summer term classes. This is true for any classes at any CUNY school.
I’m 51 years old and am either taking on so many classes that my health is at risk, to say nothing about my emotional well being, or I’m so poor that I cannot pay my bills which includes a rather large school loan payment. Further my ability to spend time working on my own research and writing is greatly curtailed. This lessens my chance of securing a full time position.
I teach at another school on Wednesdays so I cannot come out to [college omitted] to meet with you. I hope you can still use my story. I’m a decent teacher and I work very hard. I don’t deserve to have to have these sorts of worries just because I want to earn a living doing something that I love.
