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WHEN I completed my PhD in French, in 1995, I was thrilled to have a job to go to. This was not, after all, the case for everyone. That happiness faltered only slightly when my professors and other concerned parties in the know asked me if my new position was tenure-track. The answer was no, but I agreed with their quick assurances that I was young, the market was tough, a job is a job, and the experience would doubtless be invaluable. Seven years later, I am still a lecturer—albeit at a different, more prestigious university that is closer to home and in a much better climate—and I can tell you now, after my years of experience, that the worst thing about my job is the steady stream of condolences to which it apparently entitles me. Just as they did seven years ago, people ask me if my position is tenure-track. And just as before, when they find out it isn’t, they wince for me and shake their heads gloomily at the injustice of it all, always quick to add, with a reassuring nod, all the well-worn arguments intended to prove that I am not to blame for my pitiful lack of status. I tell these people what I will now place at the center of this article—namely, that I like being a lecturer. My work at the university is varied and vital. I coordinate the French-language program, supervise and mentor teaching assistants, teach everything from tenses to theater, attend professional conferences and workshops, and occasionally even find time to write. I keep busy—so busy, in fact, that I haven’t so much as glanced at a job list in over three years. Why should I try to fix a career that is not broken? Being a lecturer suits me, and any frustrations are occasional, even rare. And still there are many who feel just awful for me.
This sadness for lecturers was the subject for discussion at the first union meeting I attended. To start the conversation rolling, the organizers decided to show Barbara Wolf’s 1997 short documentary, Degrees of Shame. I sat and watched as the interviewees featured in the film expressed sentiments such as the following:
The system happily produced me. Now it doesn’t want me.
We are the cast-offs of the university system.
Our dedication makes us exploitable.
We do everything right and find the door closed.
I’m angry at myself for staying here.
All this talk of sacrifice, hardship, and bitter resentment was not only depressing; it was also unfortunate press. How, I wonder, can we argue, on the one hand, that lecturers are invaluable members of any university staff who deserve to be acknowledged and supported and, on the other hand, that the university should be ashamed of having such exploitable positions? Presenting ourselves as academia’s hapless victims is not, perhaps, the best negotiating stance.
And is it really so tragic to be a lecturer? The image of beleaguered outcast doesn’t at all coincide with my own impressions of lecturers. Those I see around me every day are fast walkers who use their outdoor voices all the time. Their arms are full, their mailboxes are full, their desks are full, and so are their schedules. The way their students mob them, you’d think they were rock stars. They hardly seem depressed to me. But perhaps they are just being brave. To satisfy my curiosity, I decided to interview those of my non-senate colleagues who had completed the PhD. I was hoping that their answers to my two simple questions would shed some light on the profession as it is experienced in my department.
The first question I asked was this: Is there anything about being a lecturer (as opposed to a ladder faculty member) that you find particularly appealing? One doesn’t often hear lecturers talking about their work in favorable terms. My informants, however, had much to offer on the subject. Their answers can be categorized into two distinct themes: the value they find in teaching, and the pleasant lifestyle their chosen career provides.
THE VALUE OF TEACHING
I find that teaching languages is the bread and butter of the department and that lecturers have hands-on experience with the students. I really enjoy that.
Because I teach so many classes, I have a good relationship with my students. I get to see, for example, why I have so many students in my film class—because many of them are from my language class, and they know me. When you are ladder faculty, you teach a smaller group of students. The relationship is not as deep. I love teaching. I’d like to have time and money to do other things but . . .
What I like about being a lecturer of foreign language is having more access to and close contact with students. I know I have helped some students, and that is a good feeling. The work with heritage speakers is the most difficult but also the most rewarding. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of my work is introducing heritage speakers to aspects of their native language of which they were not aware. It is amazing what some of them can achieve in a semester. It is exciting to see them get more interested in their native culture and use their language skills to interview their parents and write up a family history.
LIFESTYLE
Well, I like l’ambiente here. I don’t want to leave this area. I don’t want to leave California. At this point, to tell you frankly, I saw a tenure-track position and I am not applying. I don’t want to start all over again. What I want to do, instead, is push here for something—an improvement in the position of lecturers. I want to improve what I have.
There is less pressure as far as publications and service—you don’t have to be on all those committees. I was an assistant professor for three years, so I can tell you they’re very time-consuming. Here I teach a lot, but I don’t have that kind of pressure, so that’s one good thing.
I feel that I’m very close to my students when I’m on campus, and then when I get home, I can be more relaxed with my family. That’s important.
But then, going back to the positive side again—I don’t feel any jealousy. No one is waiting for me to die. It’s very cozy for me here. I’m very comfortable.
Although we may be expected to do a certain amount of semiritualized complaining in order to achieve full acceptance as an academic, we should not, I think, lose sight of what is good about our jobs. Answers to my first question make it clear that I am not alone in finding enjoyable things about my job.
The second question—What aspects of your employment as a lecturer (if any) do you find negative or frustrating?—provided me with more predictable information. The answers include the expected themes of money, time, security, and status.
MONEY
I put so much work into it, I really think we should be paid more—I don’t want to be a material girl, but still . . .
We’re barred from many grants, moneys, and applications.
TIME
Well, money—and sometimes I just think about teaching eight or nine classes a year and being considered a part-time lecturer and looking at the applications for tenure-track positions, which offer five classes a year. And that makes me sad as well, because I still have a desire and a necessity to be active professionally and to write and be a researcher.
SECURITY
Renewing the contract every year is a pain, and being a foreigner, I have to renew my visa every year, which is a much bigger pain.
STATUS
There are certain distinctions between the blue collar and the white collar in this profession, and sometimes I get the feeling that I am a blue collar because I am a lecturer. Only I try not to think that way myself.
The negative thematics about the profession should come as no surprise to anyone. Lecturers know that they are being paid roughly half as much to teach twice as many classes as those who have or will have tenure. This point is not likely to slip anyone’s mind, because these issues are not only central to ongoing union discussions and correspondence but prominent in the kind of sympathetic exchanges from colleagues I mentioned at the start of this article. I am, in fact, suspicious at how often leaders at the university choose to remind me of the nonnegotiable inequalities inherent in the job I contracted to do, since I believe that the true frustrations of being a lecturer lie elsewhere. I therefore asked those colleagues who were willing to participate in my study to tell me about a specific moment they could remember when their job became particularly frustrating to them. I call the answers “anecdotes of frustration,” and I find their unrelatedness to the perceived negative aspects of the job, which they mentioned minutes before, to be revealing.
ANECDOTES OF FRUSTRATION
There was a time when I was without a computer for eight weeks because the ladder faculty member’s computer had not arrived yet and I was supposed to get his old computer. It was a major inconvenience, because I had to use the library computer and there was always someone else on it.
It’s frustrating not having a large part in decision making that has an impact on our teaching.
Sharing an office can be a problem, because we both see a lot of students and sometimes one of us has to leave the office with the students. We have different things going on, so it can be disruptive to share an office.
I would like to direct my own program and be able to offer my students independent studies because they really need that. I can’t do that—not because I’m not capable or qualified but only because I’m a lecturer.
I do everything I can to build up enrollments and then when the students I’ve so carefully nurtured get to my tenured colleague in upper-division courses, who could care less, they all drop out.
I’m working on a new computer-based course for our program—or I’m trying to, but it’s very discouraging. I called the media desk to get some initial help, and the people there told me they have to charge lecturers. Do you charge ladder faculty, I asked? No. So never mind, I said—I’ll get my director to call. And he says, “Well, that’s subverting the system, isn’t it?” Now I’ve always wanted to see myself as subversive, but please!
They actually made me count the hours I spent doing my job so that I could justify my course release, and then they sent it back because it was too high.
What always frustrates me in a nutshell is that the system keeps you from doing your job as well as you could.
The worst day of my life was the day I came back from vacation after spending hours with the chair and the program director discussing what type of person to hire for an opening we had and talking about teaching background and methodology and the possibility of mentoring an ABD and being told that they had hired “some woman from the community who seemed nice.” That’s the day it became crystal clear to me what value they place on language teaching. But they are wrong!
There have been a few faculty meetings this fall where ladder faculty members have actually stated in meetings with lecturers present something to the effect that teaching language is a joke, that anyone can do it, and that it requires no particular skills.
As the key negative aspects of being untenurable are thought to be a lack of time, money, and security, it’s odd that the truly frustrating moments of a lecturer’s day have nothing to do with any of these things.
Teaching on any level is no one’s idea of a get-rich-quick scheme. What draws one to the profession is a love of learning and a deep-seated belief in the benefits of one’s subject matter to one’s students. While issues of salary, contract duration, and course load are certainly worth discussing, other matters, which may be even more important to lecturers, may not be addressed at all. The true frustrations in being a lecturer come from a perceived disagreement over the importance of our contribution to the education of our students. Maddening incidents are the real day-to-day manifestations of the university’s failure to recognize, value, and support the positive contributions of a lecturer’s mission that my informants expressed in their answers to my first question. From their own assessments of the positive aspects of their job, it is apparent that lecturers see the work they do as important and the benefits of their work for students significant. What is frustrating is to see their efforts not merely ignored but actually undermined by the university system—a system that is, all too frequently, perpetuated by seemingly sympathetic colleagues. This system typically denies its lecturers the most basic professional necessities: a functioning computer, technical support, input into matters of policy that primarily affect them and their students, and the all-important room of one’s own. To deny workers the necessary tools to accomplish the task they are given is to deny the importance of the task itself. Lecturers teach. Is this not an important task?
© 2003 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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