Stuck in the Kitchen of Academia: Working as an Adjunct

As an adjunct assistant professor, I’m basically stuck in the kitchen. When I teach, it’s treated like serving the food. I’m paid for “classroom contact hours,” but I don’t get my last paycheck until I turn in the grades, that is, do the dishes. I don’t set the menu or shop, and one would think I don’t even cook.

As an adjunct,  we are underpaid or not paid for work we do. So to me service is a two-edged sword. Yes, it’s housework. And yes the more powerful will try to push it off on the lower ranks and on women and minorities. But it’s also a way to belong and to influence policy. Women and minorities who do service have a foot in the door, unlike the women and minorities who work as adjunct and contingent faculty, tutors, and in support positions in academia -- in my university we are not allowed to do service.

A similar pattern holds in my faculty union, where adjuncts hold disproportionately few elected positions. One thing I’ve noticed is that many adjuncts perform service in the union in hopes of thereby “earning” the union’s support for improved conditions for adjuncts. This is unpaid and often thankless, but the union leadership – always tenure-track faculty and other full-timers – continue to demand that we come to rallies, write letters, make phone calls, etc., in the name of “unity.”