Re: Why Write?
- From: ms lynch <amy.wordnerd@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: comptesol@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 14:55:12 -0400
I very much enjoyed this article Kathleen sent. (Pasted below if you
missed it.) Yes, yes, we all know that it jives perfectly with my
favorite pastime: grinding my adjunct ax.
It inspirted me to write my own mediation (rant?) on the subject of
trying to write while being a teacher. Part I can be found on my blog
for the bored or the procratinating:
http://amy.thrushcross.com/blog/
Rough draft. Be kind. Comment if you like. Life in a jar can be lonely.=20
Now, back to proofing my own work between conferences.=20
Amy
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 12:08:30 -0700, Klompien, Kathleen J.
<kklompien@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Wednesday, October 13, 2004
> Why Do I Do This?
> By LUCY SNOWE <mailto:careers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>=20
> Career advice for part-time instructors
>=20
> Previous articles <http://chronicle.com/jobs/archive/advicearch.htm>
>=20
> When I teach an introductory course in creative nonfiction, I often begin
> with an essay by Terry Tempest Williams, "Why I Write." Every sentence of
> that essay starts with the same statement: "I write": "I write to record
> what I love in the face of loss." "I write because it is a dance with
> paradox." "I write for the surprise of a sentence."
> After some discussion of the text, I ask the students to follow Williams'=
s
> model and write a sentence that begins with "I write." They do not put th=
eir
> names on the papers, which I then collect, shuffle, and distribute random=
ly.
> Students now have in their hands a different paper -- a different reason =
for
> writing. Sitting in a circle around me, they read aloud their anonymous
> classmates' statements.
> It is one thing to write something and read it out loud. It is another to
> write something and hear someone else read it aloud. The statement, sudde=
nly
> separated from the writer, takes on an independent life. And it joins for=
ce
> with a group of statements, which, like Williams's essay, is much greater
> than the sum of its parts.
> In a sense, the class has written an essay like Williams's -- an aggregat=
e
> that lists, describes, emotes, reasons, muses, plumbs the depths, and pai=
nts
> the surface. It is an interesting, often moving, exercise. And it puts in
> the students' minds a writer's perpetual question: Why do I do this?
> That is also my perpetual question. I am a writer and a teacher of writin=
g,
> intertwined identities. I earn my livelihood by talking to college studen=
ts
> about writing, giving them assignments, reading their work, and commentin=
g
> on it.
> In between semesters and sometimes during, I write articles for newspaper=
s
> and magazines, and in the summer I work on longer pieces that take shape
> slowly. The work is satisfying but the remuneration is sparse. Teaching
> supports my writing, and as a professional writer I can offer my students
> insight into the craft of nonacademic prose. I'm a very good teacher, and=
I
> teach at a major research university in a full-time, but non-tenure-track
> position. I have a pleasant office on a beautiful campus in an attractive
> city. Ostensibly that makes for a satisfying professional life. Except ..=
.
> Except for the disconnect I experience daily between the work that I love=
,
> and the way I am treated by my department. I accept that I have a
> low-ceiling position and that tenure will never enter the picture for me.
> But getting even a definite one-year contract is an ordeal.
> My contract is always on the line, always subject to caprices, fiats,
> machinations, and finessing that the chairwoman hints at darkly but never
> explains. My salary, I am asked to believe, is contrived through the
> powerful magic of department administrators who cajole spare change out o=
f
> cheapskate deans. =C0 la Dickens's Mr. Murdstone, everything is meted out=
to
> me with parsimony, hauteur, and a grotesque sense of noblesse oblige.
> When, after 15 years of teaching at this university, I asked for a
> three-year contract, I was flatly told no, and warned not to ask again,
> "because," the chairwoman said, "I'm just going to tell you 'no' again."
> I often recall that meeting and others like it. I wonder what goes throug=
h
> the chairwoman's mind when she delivers such pronouncements, since we bot=
h
> know she earns a six-figure salary and has been actively luring academic
> superstars to campus for similarly cushy jobs.
> Does she ever wonder what it's like to be strung along until the last
> possible moment? Or what it feels like to have a contract -- filled with
> boilerplate about patents that cannot be yours if you invent something an=
d
> about the pointlessness of publications (since yours don't count toward
> tenure) -- appear in your campus mailbox at the last possible minute, or
> even a few weeks late, and to sign and return it immediately for fear tha=
t
> delay of more than a few hours will consign you to oblivion? Can she just
> shrug and accept that such are the laws of academic supply and demand?
> Over the years I have become used to the shabby treatment, but it wasn't
> until quite recently that I realized how deeply corrosive its effect has
> been on my psyche. Dealing with academic administrators is so unpleasant =
and
> so painful that I have become overly anxious, wary, edgy, short-fused, an=
d
> sleep-deprived.
> Sometimes, halfway through the semester, I ask my students to write about=
a
> situation from two perspectives. What is it like to be a cashier in a
> supermarket? What is it like to be a customer in that cashier's check-out
> line?
> Like my students in that assignment, I find myself split. On the one side=
,
> there's Happy Me, who immensely enjoys the intellectual challenges of
> designing courses, going into the classroom, introducing students to
> wonderful literature and ideas, and seeing them grow as writers.
> On the other side, there's Angry Me, whose talents and contributions are
> ignored by her employer, who earns the lowest salary of all full-time
> faculty members in the department, and whose colleagues are often
> gratuitously cruel. I remind myself interminably that the constant disdai=
n,
> pettiness, and passive aggression that I'm subjected to by these so-calle=
d
> humanists is a statement about them, not about me.
> The reality is that I'm the one who suffers, and I know this is a
> destructive way to live.
> This fall, one of my colleagues, a part-timer, was let go. I noticed that
> she wasn't at a faculty meeting in September. I was puzzled. I asked arou=
nd.
> No one had any idea where she was or what had happened. It was one of tho=
se
> Orwellian moments when you discover that your cubicle neighbor has been
> vaporized and everyone else pretends that nothing has changed, and you st=
art
> to question your own memory and sense of security.
> Next year I could be the vaporized person and history would be rewritten =
so
> that I would be retroactively excised, just like my former colleague.
> Teaching here is like being in a bad marriage that looks good to outsider=
s.
> I'm the wife whose husband slaps her around but who, nonetheless, smiles
> gamely, maintaining the relationship "for the sake of the kids."
> But the hand-writing is on the wall in giant strokes. I'm constantly aski=
ng
> myself if I'm strong enough to get by without the cushion of an instituti=
on
> that offers me library privileges, computer support, health insurance, a
> pretty office, college tuition assistance, and the opportunity to work wi=
th
> intelligent, capable, sensitive students. It's a lot to renounce; otherwi=
se
> I would have quit a long time ago.
> Recently I learned that my department has been negligent. It was supposed=
to
> have informed me well in advance if my contract would be renewed for the
> following year. That had never been done -- whether as a consequence of
> profound indifference to my fate, or administrative ineptitude. (My guess=
is
> the former.)
> But now there's a new edict in effect, and within a few weeks my immediat=
e
> superiors are supposed to tell me my status for the next academic year.
> Nothing would surprise me. If they want to cut me to part time, they'll d=
o
> it. If they want to get rid of me, they'll do it. No reason has to be
> offered, or they can make faux excuses such as "budget," "reorganization,=
"
> or, as students like to say, "whatever."
> What will I do if I lose or leave my job? I won't look for another in
> academe, that's for sure. I'm at a university that's arguably one of the
> best places in the world to teach, whose merits I fully endorse and whose
> student body is outstanding. A lateral career move would offer me less, a=
nd
> worse, than what I now have.
> Instead, I'll write. Because I can't not write -- it's essential to my
> existence. I'll figure out how to live without the pleasures and the mali=
ce
> of academe. In the long run, I might be content with the way things turn
> out. But not being able to teach would be a serious loss.
> It's an insidious dilemma: Dedication to vocation versus psychic survival=
.
> The sad thing is that it really doesn't have to be like this. I shouldn't
> have to endure the psychological abuse -- job insecurity, authoritarian
> administrative decrees, patronizing double-speak. I shouldn't be subjecte=
d
> to this kind of treatment, period. There's no reason why a top-tier
> university -- or any postsecondary institution -- should force a gifted,
> committed teacher with a legacy of appreciative, successful students, to =
the
> brink of despair.
> At least, standing on the brink, I know why I write.
> I write to exorcise the demons. I write to gain perspective. I write to
> remind myself that the act of putting words on a page and then sending th=
em
> into the world is an act of liberation.
>=20
> Lucy Snowe is the pseudonym of a lecturer in English at a major research
> university in the East.
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