Adjunct Poverty or Life in the Time of Coronavirus (Smith)

Adjunct poverty is boutique poverty. Artisanal poverty. It doesn't register with most people because you go to work every day. You have a degree or two or three (many adjuncts are actually Ph.Ds), which makes you impressive to most people. They don't blame you for being poor. They choose to view your deprived lifestyle choices as philosophical or political. And you play along with that sometimes. It's less embarrassing than admitting you don't have money.

In America, money trumps intellect. Money trumps education. Money trumps everything.

Still, as an adjunct, you are somewhat respected. You listen to NPR or have a blog or know wines, or whatever bougie “thing” you're into, and it gives you a social boost.

Typically, if you live in a bad neighborhood, people don't know it. Or your interior is artsy enough to make up for it. Filled with books and exotic compensatory whatnot.

If you're receiving SNAP or some other form of aid, people don't suspect it.

Some semesters, you're lucky enough to receive Medicaid, so you have insurance. You can get your glasses replaced or your cavities filled before your income fluctuates, and the county takes your coverage away again. You can afford your Prozac for four months. Or your insulin. Your blood pressure medication. You can try to squeeze in that surgery you need although probably not, because how will you remain afloat during the recovery if you can't work?

Adam Harris writes, "If adjuncts were birds, they would be fighting the drag of the air, exerting bursts of energy again and again and again."

One of the ways I have dealt with it over the years is living with my parents. I have availed myself of county assistance when I could get it. I have worked side gigs. I have gone without prescriptions. I have filed for bankruptcy. I have robbed Peter to pay Paul.

I am writing this post though because the Covid-19 outbreak has underlined yet again for me how exploitative and unhealthy adjunct teaching is for the thousands of us out here that have opted and/or have been impelled to do it.

This spring I have one class on my college roster. If it weren't for the contract work I have been doing in public schools, I would have been living off $3000 for the semester. That's from January to May.

Still, I felt blessed. At least I had those contract gigs. I was ramping up to go back to school to get my master's degree in urban secondary teaching. I was getting closer to professional fulfillment and financial stability. I was excited for both.

Then the coronavirus hit.

The closing of the public schools stripped me back down to my one adjunct course, and all the worst that comes with being an adjunct for a living. It reminded me that I have been intending to write about what it's like to be an adjunct in the American academic machine. An overworked, underpaid, vital but devalued cog.

It also forced me to grapple with the anti-imperialist discussions I see up and down my social media feeds - that I rather lazily, even glibly scroll past because we're never going to dismantle The System, amirite? The best we can hope to do is get a big enough piece of pie to eat until we die.

Adjunct poverty and all its sociological brothers and sisters are offspring of two major problems with the economic structure in America: political self-interest and corporate greed. I don't know that these things can ever be "cured," but in a system that does not so readily and copiously reward them, they can be more effectively mitigated. They can be fought.

If this pandemic teaches us nothing, it's that the most virulent sickness in America - that needs addressing - is rampant capitalism (commercialization, commodification).

That is the biggest culprit of the total system failure triggered by, first, the election of Donald Trump, second, the reification of his leadership, and third, the disaster that occurred when coronavirus came into being, and the country needed an actual president to lead it but had to make due with a trust fund poster child for US kyriarchy.

Rampant capitalism is what keeps us poor poor while the rich get unfathomably richer with every passing day.

Rampant capitalism is what has made it so that many working people like me are more terrified of what will happen to us if we can't return to work in the next few weeks than of what will happen to us if we contract Covid-19.

Michelle R. Smith is a poet, blogger, educator, cultural facilitator. She teaches at Kent State University at Stark and at Cuyahoga Community College. Her work has been published in poemmemoirstory; Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism; Guide to Culture Creative Journal; and Gasconade Review. Her first full length collection, Ariel in Black, was released in 2015.