When An Adjunct Gets An Unlucky Break

by Eliana Osborn

I have been an adjunct English professor at the same community college for 14 years. I also worked various full time jobs for a lot of the years and have never applied for full time.

I usually teach three courses per semester, three credits each. $633 per credit, which comes out to $5700 for a four month term. I am not the primary money person in our family, thank goodness. But the money I earn takes care of all the non-essentials of life: piano lessons, trips, new tires.

The day after spring semester started I had shoulder surgery. I should have listened to the nurses and doctors but I thought I would bounce back quickly. I figured I would have one bad teacher week and then get back to normal, at least in terms of teaching. Quickly I realized my fault: that I’m a mess who can’t write or drive or type or read or come up with coherent thoughts. This will all remedy itself, but not in time for me to salvage my classes. I had to resign.

“How much time are you taking off?” a friend asked when she dropped off cinnamon rolls. I thought she was joking. Another person inquired about what I would be making while on disability.

For both of their sakes, and for anyone lucky enough to have a benefit-laden ‘real’ job, let me tell you how it goes.

If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. No sick leave. Even if I prepare lessons and such for a sub, I still don’t get paid. I have no employee leave bank, no disability plan, nothing. I don’t even qualify for unemployment ever because I’m at will for each semester with no guarantee of future work.

If this was just me, tough luck. But the number of college professors who are adjunct is insane in this country and something’s going to have to change soon. If you care, check out the folks at New Faculty Majority and their work on contingent faculty issues.

I also work as a freelance writer, so I’ll be bringing in a little money this spring. I write for three education related websites, averaging $100 per post/essay. I can count on three pieces a month for each site, hopefully more since I’ve got all this free time going on, which will be $900 per month. I place individual work also for magazines and stuff like that. It isn’t consistent though and is always a crap shoot. I can estimate $500 a month for that kind of work though I could luck out and sell a long essay to Playboy for $10,000.

For January till the end of May, I’m looking at maybe $6000. This is much better than nothing. But it is half of what we’d planned on, and as far as I know you can’t get the same new back door for half the money. Or the family vacation we’d been hoping for. Or be able to put a little money away for the next broken home appliance.

We’ll be ok, just not happy. And that’s the problem with the gig economy: no safety net for when things go wrong.

Eliana Osborn is a writer and part time English professor living in the desert southwest.

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