“When can you start?”

“As soon as I’m needed.”

“Classes begin in two weeks. Faculty orientation sessions this week. I can print you out a copy of the schedule.”

There are many things you’re left to discover on your own when signing on as an adjunct instructor. You need a parking pass that costs $350 to park anywhere within a mile of campus. You don’t get a full paycheck for two months. You share an office with eight other people. You don’t get a code for the printer. You encounter full-time instructors and professors who look right past you once they realize you’re a part-timer. You don’t understand the social dynamics. You teach whatever courses you’re offered. You don’t have health insurance. You ask yourself if it’s all worth it at the end of each day. You don’t feel very human. 

Your first semester schedule is a patchwork quilt. 8:00 A.M. Freshman Comp 101, 1:00 P.M. Introduction to Argument 102, 3:00 P.M. Freshman Comp 101, 4:00 P.M. American Literature II, and 6:00 P.M. Freshman Comp. Three preps over the course of a ten-hour day, three times a week. A long day, but it beats the 12 to 16-hour shifts at the paper mill you worked back home right after high school. 

The mill was really the only way to make a decent living back home if you didn’t have a safety net. Your grandfather worked there, as did your father and your uncle. It was stable with good pay and benefits, but it was tough work. You saw it break the bodies of the people you love. You didn’t see it robbing them of time and memories with their loved ones. You did enjoy the camaraderie with your coworkers. You didn’t enjoy the smell. Anything within a five-mile radius was saturated with the acrid smell of industry. The old-timers always joked that it “smelled like money.” Most of them died before they ever got the chance to enjoy what they’d saved.

That first fall semester starts in the middle of August, in the unforgiving heat of an Alabama summer. Once the students flock back for school, the town is past capacity, with tens of thousands of people simmering in a stew of humidity. Your classes are scattered from one side of campus to the other. Ten thousand steps by noon. You wonder why you wore a dress shirt and tie. In the bathroom, you can’t wring out the sweat from your shirt. You feel the need to catch your breath before walking into a classroom filled with undergrads. You don’t have much time.

After the semester ends, there are a few weeks to compose yourself before spring courses begin. You think you’ll get ahead by planning out your syllabi in advance. You don’t realize that your course offerings are only tentative. Two days before the semester begins, two of those four courses you’d prepped for are handed over to full-time instructors. Now, you’re stuck with half a paycheck until summer. You look for other work. You aren’t sure how to make ends meet. Maybe you can pick up a course or two at the community college across town, if you’re lucky. 

When the spring ends, so does the pay. For three months, there is a window of time that is yours, and yours alone. Maybe it means serving at a coffee shop. Maybe you find an opportunity as a delivery driver. Maybe you work with a landscaping company. Maybe. 

The truck wash a few miles up the interstate is always hiring. $15 an hour sounds like a dream compared to minimum wage. Once hired, you spend your days in a bay that mists heated water on 18-wheelers, running a pressure washer all over the big trucks. 115 degrees and soaking wet in the shade. You get cramps in your hands from operating the spray gun all day. You don’t enjoy the smell of the rotten meat and animal feces you wash out of the trailers. You puke at least once a day, either from the smell or heat sickness. You don’t forget why you’re here. Your feet are wet all day. 

Taking this teaching job meant moving hours away from your family. The big city is a far cry from the small town of eight hundred you call home. No red lights. The closest store sits 15 minutes away in either direction. At night, in that small town, it’s just you and the darkness. And the crickets. And frogs. There is no dark silence of peace in the city. The light and sirens are ever-present. People look at you differently when you tell them you’re from the mud puddle. You meet people who think less of you. You don’t allow them to get too close to the truth. You feel sorry for them. You don’t feel sorry for yourself. 

After a year or two, the routine is in place. A full plate of classes in the fall, scant offerings in the spring, and a free-for-all in the summer. Rinse and repeat. After a dozen years, you get tired of applying for full-time positions, but you don’t quit. After a global pandemic and a shortage of people willing to do the job, you eventually get your shot at a full-time instructor gig. It will feel good to finally have some breathing room. It won’t matter how you got it. It will be nice to sit down and write about it one summer day. It won’t make much sense to anyone other than yourself. 

Travis Turner is native of Alabama’s Black Belt. He teaches writing at the University of Alabama. Cats, books & gardens take up the rest of his free time.