How Did I Get Here?

Who hasn't asked this question? Talking Heads asked this. Joyce Carol Oates asks this: Where are you going, where have you been? I came across it again while reading Klaus Mann's Mephisto today. An attaché from a Scandinavian country asks himself how he's ended up at the gargantuan and grotesque yet highly civilized and oddly enchanting birthday party of a high-ranking Nazi official. "How did I get here?"

I asked myself this question again, today, while having a cup of coffee with a professor visiting for the quarter from Germany. I'd sat in one of her classes and had been impressed with her calm demeanor and laid-back nature. She was a walking encyclopedia, one of those scarily well-read people who actually knew what they were talking about and wrote books.

I also liked her because we were wearing the same ring, three silver bands loosely entwined, a ring I'd worn in one form or another for 20 years.

She had on these black and grey striped tights, a similar dress. She looked like a German Dr. Seuss, only more reserved.

We were talking about my career, a place I don't like to go, because it's as barren as a 100-year-old woman's womb. The professor suggested I consider going to Japan for a few years, work in one of the German Studies departments there, as they're very interested in hiring right now.

"And I don't think I could have said this 10 years ago, but a black woman in a German Studies department is something unique indeed."

Too true.

"But tell me, have you finished your dissertation?"

"Yes, I finished in 1998."

"'98?"

I took a slow, quiet, deep breath. I knew what was coming. "Yes, in '98."

"Oh. That's a while. 11 years. You might be better idf staying here and doing the same rhing for a while. Where were you?"

Where was I? I've been trying to answer that for years. I've been trying to make up for it almost as long.

I told her the story, the whole thing I'd told another professor in the spring. What bothered me most was the fact that the story never became more comprehensible, that it never seemed to get better, that it never hurt any less to know how badly I seem to have screwed up. A woman without a country and only a shitty sob-story to call her own.

How did I get here? Where am I? Maybe if I start with the latter question, I can better answer the former.

Where am I?

Right at this moment I'm sitting on a train on my way back to the city, where I'll pick up my car and go home. I'll change clothes and go to fencing. Then, I will go back home, make some dinner, and grade essays.

But I guess that's not the really an adequate answer.

I am trying to find my way to the surface of academia again, too stupid to give up, and too lacking in other, more profit-oriented skills that could actually help me pay off my student loans.

I'm 38 years old, single, childless, and working as an adjunct lecturer between 2 vastly different institutions.

I am in a place where I can't seem to move forward but refuse to step back.

I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place, trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, if you don't mind incongruous metaphors.

I am teaching at a great university in a great German Studies Department. I am working with people who are teaching me things I should have learned in graduate school, and students I enjoy and adore.

And it is only temporary at best.

I am on the brink of getting it, of actually using my brain for something other than wondering what's for dinner, or if I should wash the dishes or take out the garbage.

I am in transition, I hope to better things.

So does that help explain any better how I got here?

Does that mean that I simply don't know?But I know. Very clear cut choices landed me where I am.

I try to focus on the good choices. Without choosing to go back and live in Germany for a year, I would have never taken the job where I am now. If I hadn't stopped talking to my ex after the break up, I'd be an even bigger basket case than I am now. If I hadn't chosen to stick to a diet for more than a year, I would have never lost the 80 pounds that made me miserable for 7 years.

Is my learning curve just that much worse? Is that why I did so badly in geometry?

People tell me it's unproductive to worry the past like a dog does a bone. They're right. Doesn't make it any easier though.

Some would say that my "here" ain't that bad. And I agree. But it ain't that great either.

The professor, towards the end of our chat, pointed at my ring and said, "We're wearing the same ring." She smiled brightly.

"I've had this ring for 20 years." I did not mention the gold version I wore for almost 12 years, the ring I buried in a box and passed over to friends so I wouldn't set the whole thing on fire and regret it later. That was five years ago. My friends still have the box.

"I chose this ring because of my three children."

I got the ring instead of children.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

It is one thing to be an underpaid adjunct lecturer. It is entirely another to be an unpaid adjunct lecturer. As an underpaid lecturer, you get to at least eat while you bitch about your plight. As an unpaid lecturer, you just bitch. You don't even get a cocktail to soften the blow of the day.

Due to the horrific joke called our economy, the community college I work for had to slash its budget dramatically, which put part-timers like me on the chopping block faster than a lamb at a biblical slaughter get-together. The English department had to cut its budget by 12.9% for the academic year. The only way to achieve this and keep everyone employed was to take some of us (I mean me and a few other schmucks) off of full instructional time and place us on non-instructional assignments. Note that the first three letters of "assignment" describes a particular state of being. Non-instructional assignments, for the layman, are hours clocked doing something other than teaching, for example, sitting in a writing lab, or contemplating suicide.

My non-instructional assignment came in the form of monitoring the new English Lab at a satellite campus deep in the 'hood. The "campus," which consists of one sad building that strikingly resembles the local County Jail, reflects the principles of a community college, as the whole community--enrolled or not enrolled--come into the building. The unenrolled come in because they have learned that there are computers with Internet access inside. The enrolled come because they have to.

Most things I can live with, like the girls who answer their cell phones in the lab and proceed to have a full-volume conversation with their baby's daddy. Even the people who punctuate every sentence, not to mention every independent clause, dependent clause, preposition and transitional adverb with "my nigga" give me little pause. The "students" who don't have any business within a 100-foot radius of the building but come in to print out their travel itineraries don't bother me so much, either. It's being saddled with a program that I will appropriately title Gateway to Hell that raises the hackles on the back of my neck.

Gateway to Hell is a program designed for high school students who don't "fit in" to normal school environments (Translation: teens from 15 to 19 years old who have dropped out of school, are gang members, are apprenticing prostitutes, or are doing this because the terms of their parole require it). One or two good students who actually want to be there to learn something and move on with their lives have somehow been gathered up with their contemporaries and have to endure the same crap as the rest of us. But for the most part the program consists of kids who have never experienced a boundary in their lives and are in desperate need of therapy and a healthy dose of shock treatments. Let's just say that they didn't do so hot in finishing school.

Note: yes, I understand and have a profound appreciation for the fact that these children--because they are children--come from a variety of highly fascinating forms of dysfunctional families. In the first six weeks, I learned more about being a street kid, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism and drug abuse, mental illness, eating disorders and social workers than I thought I would in a year. But since they applied for the program, since they said they wanted a 15th chance, since they said they were "college ready," and since the staff running the program told us the same thing--which they knew at the time was bollocks--my sympathy has quickly run dry.

Maybe if they didn't come in for their required lab hours so high kites would be envious, or if they actually did something other than look for ultimate fighting footage online, or if they stopped spending all their time uploading pictures from their cell phones and trying to score dates on facebook, I might be more tolerant. I might be more easy going if, when I told them they are supposed to be working on their papers, since it is, like, the English lab, they didn't look at me like they wanted to jump me later in the parking lot and then go right back to checking out tire rims. I might feel more warm and fuzzy if I felt like I could leave my belongings in the lab when I go to the bathroom--but I can't, since they've stolen crap from other people who work for the program. I might feel the milk of human kindness flow through me a little if I actually got paid for the work.

But I haven't been paid in over a month, because the Gateway to Hell program screwed up the accounting. I am being paid for my instructional hours, but not the non-instructional ones, the ones for which I really need some kind of reason not to blow my head off with a shotgun. I am not the only person who's experiencing this. I'm just the one who's most pissed off about it. It is one thing to work in little South Central with the Future Thugs of America. It is entirely another to not get paid for it.

I'm certain that if this had happened to the chair of our department, or one of the administrators for the Gateway to Hell program, an emergency check would have been cut toot sweet. But no, I am making calls, doing the rounds, and am getting ready to call my union, for what seems like the thousandth time.

The situation once again reminds me of how awful this particular community college is. This is a college that had to slash budgets, but managed to waste millions of dollars on two construction projects that, now over budget to an alarming extent, have to be put on hold. This is the school that every few years has some kind of scandal about misappropriation of funds, for which one or another bigwig at the school is responsible. This is the school that, despite the fact it has 40,000 students, can't stay above water, even if you threw it a life preserver. This is a community college where someone actually suggested that, in order to bridge the budget gap, we allow private entities to sponsor classes. Sure! Why not? We'll get Coca-Cola to sponsor Health and Nutrition classes, and the Pro-Life people can sponsor the classes in Childhood Development. While we're at it, let's get the KKK to sponsor Religious Studies classes.

Cut the f#*@ing shit.

How is it that the people doing the work for which community colleges are best known and which they espouse--providing access to higher education for the more challenged and disenfranchised members of our community--are the ones not getting paid? The Chancellor goes home to a lovely, warm place where the bills are most likely paid and few threats of bankruptcy and destitution hang over their head. Full-timers get to teach overload while part-timers go wait tables. Landscaping is lovely and the new buildings on campus are immaculate. But I'm wondering how I can turn chunk tuna from a can into an interesting, exciting, and hopefully halfway tasty meal. At least I don't have any cats I have to fight with for the lion's share. I don't get combat pay, although I deserve it, if not, at the very least, a flak jacket and a Howitzer.

The woman in Payroll who is supposedly the nexus point of this clusterfuck has been unavailable, out of her office, hard to reach, not doing her job. I'm sure she's off somewhere enjoying her pay, doing things like putting gas in her car, buying groceries, paying a hit man to finally put an end to her unhappy marriage, which is most likely the fault of a lack of organization and empathy on her part, if her job performance is any kind of reflection. And when she gets back to her desk, She might even clock some overtime, since she has a lot of catching up to do.

She's not the only one who's asleep at the wheel, as is obvious to almost all of us now. I want to track down this woman and her ilk and have them locked in stocks in a public square so I can throw rotten vegetables and fish heads at them, before I move on to bricks and pit bulls. At least they'll be getting paid while they're being abused. I don't even have that right now.

It is one thing to have a job in which you are supposed to take deal with other people's laziness, sloth, bad attitude, wastefulness, corruption and general stupidity. But it is another ball of wax altogether to not get paid for it.