Living the Contradictions of Precarious Labor
Intro
*bell rings, students filing in*
Lisa
The first class I ever taught, I couldn’t get over the fact that students were actually writing down what I said! It was wild. I had been in hundreds of classrooms but now, I was the one at the front!
Nan
[laughs] Power!
Lisa
And when I introduced myself, I noticed that they were interested in personal details like the fact that I was Canadian, but they didn’t seem to care about where I got my Ph.D. or the topic of my research...
Nan
Right, students don’t necessarily key in on the details of the profession, like who has tenure or what tenure is! Students also don’t tend to know, and I think people, in general, don’t know—that so MANY of those classroom teachers are basically contract workers. They work for incredibly low pay without any sense of job security, without health insurance, even without consistent access to some of the basic services at their institution.
Jennifer
I can't apply for research grants; postdocs are for people for one or two years out of school, right? There's no funding source that I can participate in. I can't participate in any hiring decisions or, you know, be part of the larger university. And yet I'm supposed to be able to kind of guide students through the experience and it's, uh, it's difficult to do that when my email might be cut off, you know, at the end of the semester.
[laughter] You know? And you're like, well, I hope you can get in touch with me! [laughter]
Nan
That’s Jennifer Hyland Wang [WONG], and she has been adjuncting for a long time.
Jennifer
In 1997 I started in grad school at UW Madison. So I've been teaching on and off since then. You know, as a grad student until 2006. And then after that on and off for the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Nan
I wanted to talk to Jennifer because–and I don’t think I ever even told you this Lisa– my very first job in the early 1990s, while I was still a grad student, was as an adjunct at Metro State University in St Paul Minnesota. I taught one course each quarter for $2000 a course. I was so excited to be in the classroom. The cash helped me make ends meet; I figured if I didn’t get a tenure track job, I’d increase the number of classes I taught there while I kept trying.
Lisa
I’m seeing that story from a really different perspective because I’m the director of a program, so I’m responsible for hiring adjuncts and we rely on this like, incredible array of amazing people, and they all get paid per course, and who don’t receive health insurance or retirement benefits. And, you know, they are the ones who teach all of our core classes, practically. And at this point in time, my program employs more adjuncts than we do full-time faculty!
Nan
We sometimes call this “gigification” because people are hired per course and have little or no institutional standing, but that can give the impression it’s new. But really, it started in the 1980s when the Reagan administration slashed federal student aid allocations and shifted people to loans. Then they privatized the loan programs and tuition got way more expensive because state funding also dried up. So schools started competing for students through all these expensive amenities, fancy dorms, the sports facilities, rather than through academic programs, which languished.
So now, 30 years later we have beautiful rec centers, a massive student debt crisis, and departments that can’t afford to hire professors.
Lisa
Exactly — so now there are legions of folks who are teaching for very little money and even less institutional security. My program isn’t an exception, it’s the rule: Nation-wide, non-tenure-track instructors make up to 70 percent of college faculty today. And when I say underpaid – some qualify for SNAP or other forms of assistance.
I mean, if we’re being honest, the whole tenure track model was designed when white men basically had exclusive claim to the vast majority of professor jobs. Now, is it a coincidence that as more people of color and women have entered the academy, the number of stable jobs with decent pay and good benefits have disappeared?
Nan
No! Which gets at another reason I wanted to talk to Jennifer. She’s a mom and a contingent faculty member and she has really clear insight into how the whole thing works and doesn’t work. And she’s also an activist for contingent faculty within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Oh, and by the way, I’m Nan Enstad in Madison, Wisconsin
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Lisa
And I’m Lisa Levenstein in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Nan
And today on Collegeland, my conversation with Jennifer Hyland Wang.
Jennifer
My name is Jennifer Hyland Wang, and I a, I would say, part-time mother and part-time adjunct faculty or contingent faculty. My husband was, uh, got a great job in Madison. We loved Madison and it was, “this is going to be a great place to settle and to have a family,” but my job options were, were limited. Um, and so for I would say for the last, you know, maybe fifteen or sixteen years, it's been struggling to try to figure out how do I feed that part of myself who needs to be in that sort of intellectual world and interact with students and at the same time, feel like personally, I could take care of kids. My husband has a pretty high-powered job. And so we had to kind of figure out how were we going to split that labor in a way that made sense. And, uh, the easiest way to do it was for me to be flexible.
Nan
How typical do you feel like you are as a precarious laborer [laughs] in the university? You've been doing it for a long time. And I think that I've had in my, at the front of my mind, you know, the people who are doing this for a few years and trying to get a different kind of job. But in fact, that's not necessarily true.
Jennifer
I mean, I think there are more people like me out there who are trying to struggle with how to do motherhood and academia and try to do it with a tenure track position. I would say that I am an exceptional case in that I have the luxury of having a partner with health insurance and a separate income, which many, many precarious laborers do not have. Um, and so I've been able to maintain this somewhat tenuous relationship with academia because of that. Um, I think that for many precarious laborers, particularly with the pandemic, the scarcity of tenure track jobs, I think means that, more and more, precarious labors, um, are in this for quite, quite a long time. And if you think about the conditions in which many people are laboring, no health insurance, no job security. It is a very difficult life to sustain.
Nan
Yeah. I've known many people who have done it and who have stopped doing it because It's just too hard.
Jennifer
It’s just too hard.
Nan
It's just too hard. Um, which is an, uh, you know, heartbreaking decision when they get to that point.
Jennifer
Yeah, and I think it’s even more frustrating when you kind of go through grad school, that this should be a place that has options, that sees the power structure that understands that, um, I mean, the way that I conceptualize it is that the jobs in academia were designed for white middle-class heterosexual men.
Nan
Who have wives typing their papers…
Jennifer
Who have wives typing their papers and taking care of children and every iteration outside of that, it gets harder and harder. It's, it's hard to work in a system with rules that were not made for you.
It feels like it's designed, it was designed for different bodies and it feels so frustrating that an institution that should be more open to this and aware of this should be more responsive and it's not. And I think the other thing is, is, you know, I think if you are a thoughtful teacher, you get into this business because you love the students, you love this age range, this kind of developmental time in everyone's lives; and to do the things that you need to things like being available for, um, office hours, without an office, writing letters of recommendation, you know, counseling kids on, you know, different kind of career paths, all of that labor is unpaid.
Nan
Yeah. Yeah. And we haven't even gotten to, like, scholarship. Right. Which is also totally unpaid.
Jennifer
Totally unpaid. Yeah. I am fortunate in that I can rely on a partner who, we subsidize - we put aside a little money each year so I can go to one conference a year, um, for which I write up one paper a year and then try to develop that and, and, um, and publish it. But for many precarious laborers, there are no travel grants. There are no research grants. And the only way to quote, get out of precarious labor is to do that research and do that scholarship; or at least that's the hope.
Nan
I'm so glad you're talking about this motherhood piece because I just think that every person who is the primary caregiver for children and trying to do this work has really struggled. Whether they're on the tenure track and if it's even worse if they're not on the tenure track. So I, I wanted to quote your own writing to you:
I write about broadcasting history in the interstices of my day, amid carpools, dentist appointments, and sinks full of dishes. At the same time, I mother in the margins between publishing deadlines and conference presentations. I am paid for neither, and feel compelled to do both…
So I don’t know if you have anything you want to say about that, but I love that. just wanted to thank you for writing that that's really very beautiful. And also like it fits into what you said about a certain kind of person that these jobs were made for.
Jennifer
It makes me a little weepy, when you read it back to me…um, what was really interesting about that particular project that I wrote that for is, you know, you're taught in academia, or the impression is, “keep your personal sort of out,” right? And I remember bringing that to my writing group, but it just sort of all that all fell out of me, and my group was concerned that I shouldn't put that in the academic paper because I was going to seem unprofessional.
Nan
Wow.
Jennifer
…and what I'm so proud of that little piece, is that my “in-between-ness” helps to see some of these sorts of connections. You know, like how do you live the contradiction of performing a very traditional gender role, mother, primary caregiver, stay-at-home-mom, right?
And at the same time, I'm a feminist scholar, and the discordance in that the the the contradictions and how you have to live in those contradictions that you're like I, you know, I'll give you a. Just a weird tangent. I'm giving you the story of when my little middle boy was about six years old, he was working at the kitchen table with my then four-year-old son. So my six-year-old and four-year-old were working, doing schoolwork and I was making dinner at the time. And my littlest child said, mom, how do you spell, you know, whatever word it was. And, my middle son said, you know, “don't ask mom that I don't even know if she's been to college…”
Nan
[gasps]
Jennifer
And it was this moment that it stops your heart because you're like. And I was like, hey, hey, hey I'm like, “not only do I have…” but then, you know, it stops you short, like there's this life that I chose that I thought was best to protect and preserve this family. The idea of moving family from one part of the country, to another part of the country, every one or two years; that didn't feel sustainable.
And so I thought I'd made this great choice. And then you're like, Ugh, this choice. Now my son has a perspective of my role that yeah just breaks my heart, not what I wanted. I wanted to be a better example for him.
break out 1
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Nan
So Lisa, this idea of “living the contradictions,” it just…really resonated with me. I don’t have kids, but over the decades I’ve been in this profession I’ve seen how the lack of societal support for parenting and caregiving pits people against each other. The people who have children feel judged by the people who don’t, and definitely vice versa, too. So to hear Jennifer say that it’s like “Yeah! Because the structure of academia is patriarchal!” There’s just no way to win.
Lisa
Totally, you know I was the first person in my department to take a parental leave. Ever. And that was in the 2000s. And then I had two kids before tenure, which was… well, let’s just say, not the recommended path. I remember trying to figure out who I could turn to for advice and it really was a challenge. None of my advisors had two kids. I actually can remember making a list of prominent women in my field – people who had careers I hoped I could emulate – and not a single one of them had two kids. The norm was either one kid or, honestly, most often, none.
Nan
Yeah! I once had a grad student literally terrified to tell me that she was pregnant because she assumed I wouldn’t support her because I don’t have kids – I “didn’t have a family” is how she put it, and she was already really mad about me not supporting her! And then I was insulted, because of course I supported her, and I do have a family! I have a lovely queer family, without children.
So it was super awkward for a minute, but we got over it pretty fast and I remember it tho because it’s so classic. The system just doesn’t make it easy to combine any kind of caregiving with academic work. And then, if you’re contingent, you have even less stability. In fact, instability is baked into these positions.
Here at UW, there is a rule that you can only be an adjunct for three consecutive years, and after that you have. tobe fired for a year. Then you can come back and have three more years. The idea is that departments will create a new line for someone if they are going to employ them year after year after year, or that these rules somehow “protect” tenure track jobs, but, you know, that’s bullshit. And, adjuncts often don’t get to be full participants in the life of their department.
Lisa
Yeah, this is a complicated issue -- when we invite adjuncts to participate in the life of the department, we are basically asking them to do work for free.
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Jennifer
I would describe my experience of being a precarious laborer in academia and being a mom as living with your nose pressed against the glass because even as a teacher, I don't go to faculty meetings. I don't have any say or anything involved in any sort of administrative decisions and teaching. For a lot of people, they don't have people that they can ask about a teaching problem about, you know, “how do we handle this at this university/” If they're teaching at three or four universities, you know, talking pedagogy, you don't have that, that kind of support.
Nan
And let it just be acknowledged that being a graduate student in itself is an infantilizing and aggravating experience. So you go through this, like, “am I smart enough? Am I good enough?” You know, and some people sail through that and get anointed very explicitly, but for most people, there's like, you have to fight your inner demons, um, all the time, and you're not really enfranchised. So you go from this long protracted period of not really being enfranchised, not really being treated as an adult, not really being given decision-making capabilities, not being trusted with keys. And people, your age are, you know, running for Congress and things like that, you know, but you're like, “um, can I sign out a key? No. Okay.”
So you go from that and then if you, and then if you start adjuncting, right, you become this, I've seen people say, like, "I never get to grow up," which is a horrible way to feel, right. Or to be made, to feel, I should say it's a horrible way for a system, and I know that maybe nobody is intending that feeling, but it's structural and it's terrible.
Jennifer
I'll tell, tell you, this is one of my, um, this piece of advice helps me the most and helps when I share it with, um, other contingent faculty, particularly people who are just starting who are younger than me. One of my favorite TV shows when I was a little kid, was the Brady Bunch and there is an episode in the Brady Bunch when all of the Brady Bunch were in like a performing group; so they were all singing together. And Greg, who was the oldest child in the group, he gets pulled out by some, you know, kind of onlookers to say like, “Oh, you are an amazing talent. You are fantastic at singing. The girls are gonna go crazy for you, blah, blah, blah. And, um, we want to make you a pop star.” So the episode develops that he's full of himself because he is better than everybody else. And at the very end of the episode, there is a suit, it's this like kind of toreador, kind of little suit, little jacket and that's what they want him to wear as being a certain kind of a pop star. He finds out that the only reason that they chose him was that he fit the suit.
Nan
[Laughs]
Jennifer
…and that is hiring in academia because every academic department has a different idea of what the suit is. They don't tell you what it is, right. And, and then that year you have four or five or 10 opportunities around the country to fit that suit. And sometimes it doesn't, and it's not your fault that that suit doesn't fit you. When I had that realization of like, oh if you just don't fit the suit, it's not shameful.
It's, it's just, you didn't fit the suit…
Nan
And I can say from the other side of the table, watching a lot of hires over the course of my career, that that suit is the business suit. It is the man's business suit and the preference for white cis men is, is, unconscious perhaps, but still super deep, really, really, really deeply embedded in how people think, about it; that's been my observation.
Jennifer
I would say like the suit is not only gender and class and racially, you know, kind of coded, but also, does your research conflict with somebody else's research on that, in that department, is there overlap well, then you don't fit the suit…
Breakout 2
Nan
Lisa, I just have to say—when I got my first tenure track job, I fit the suit: departments were under the gun in the early 1990s to hire women so they listed positions in the relatively new, but thriving field of women’s history, which was my subject area. And being a woman was, actually helpful for a hot minute! But then, when I started, there were several adjuncts working there, and one of them lost their job because I was hired. The course she taught is one I would now be teaching. She was really mad, and I didn’t blame her. I had just been an adjunct myself five minutes ago!
Lisa
Yeah, totally, I have sat on hiring committees where it was so clear what the suit was. Then you are just wading through pages and pages of really qualified folks who just will never get an interview.
Nan
And another component of this, which we haven’t even touched on yet, is research! Many, many people are drawn to academia to teach, but at the same time, they are passionate about the research that they are doing. But it is so hard to keep that going as an adjunct. I asked Jennifer how she does it.
Jennifer
I am very fortunate to have had two female mentors in my graduate life. One, who is Judith Smith who's a retired professor at UMass Boston and, Michele Hilmes in the department of communication arts here. And there are two women who are not only extraordinary scholars, but managed motherhood and scholarship, and teaching. And, whenever I would get down because there's these moments when you're like, this is ridiculous. I should just give up. And I would have those moments where I would write, I would think particularly to like Judith Smith and I would write to her and she came back to me with a little, little email that said," figuring out things is part of who you are and if you do not feed that, a little part of yourself will die." And that advice, particularly at that moment became really life-changing for me because I'm like, okay, I'm researching podcasting, um, recently, and I am looking at like, why is it so hard for women, you know, for women to be podcasters? Why is, why is podcasting such a gendered environment? Right now I'm studying knitting podcasts. Some of the very first podcasts were knitting podcasts.
Nan
That's amazing…
Jennifer
It completely rewrites the story that we've told ourselves about how podcasting developed. There were people in these small little subcultural groups, right, trying to speak out too, to develop community; these knitting podcasts were developed with the intention that you would craft or knit along with the podcast. So it wasn’t instructional, it was communal. And their story, the story of these women is not being written.
Nan
Oh, that I love that…
Jennifer
And, so I think for me, partly, my research is informed not only by my academic studies but by my life, right? That feeling of, oh, I have a voice and I just want to get it out there. And I, I want someone to hear my perspective and that drives my work. Like how do I find these female podcasters who don't have the money to, to archive their podcasts, who don't have the resources who podcast from in-between soccer games and that kind of stuff, who just want a voice? Like how do I amplify that? And that's been my, um, my sort of drive in my research over the last, I would say five to ten years, just trying to figure out where are these silenced voices and can I bring them out and that's my service kind of, you know? And it's this both like an academic service, but it's also like personal; like, you're okay. Like, it's okay. Like, I get my voice through them having a voice.
podcasting clip
“knit, knit like the wind, this is Cast On with Brenda Dane…”
Lisa
Okay, this is amazing! I knit! And I never knew about knitting podcasts!
podcasting clip
today pulling a geographic…. [sheep baaa]
Nan
I know! Jennifer’s research is so cool and you can see that it all connects to this theme of women weaving their care work and their professional work together in a way that just doesn’t register in our systems of recognition.
podcasting clip
today, I’ll be talking about why falling on your face counts as forward motion…
Lisa
In media history, people often just assume that men are the “technological pioneers.” Meanwhile, here are a group of women, knitting and also developing community and reimagining the relationship between broadcasters and listeners. I mean, just check some more of this out.
podcasting clip
…all of this, today’s sweater, and some really great music, it’s time to cast on. Hey everybody, happy Friday! I am happy to see the end of the week, this week. I’ve had a very, very busy week this week. I don’t know what gives. It’s my new resolution…
Nan
You know, I felt bad when I asked Jennifer why she keeps doing her research. Ya know, I’m on the tenure track and no one asks me that, they just assume I keep doing research. I thought she might say– f- you! Of course, I do research! But, she was very nice about it.
You know, I think there are ways that the whole institution suffers if teachers don’t have time or support to do research, not just that one faculty member. I mean, I definitely know that my research and teaching are tied so closely together and they get energy from each other.
Possible addition (Lisa)
And what's really crappy about the current situation is that most adjuncts can't get that kind of energy. Energy, that I'll point out, benefits not just teachers but also the students in their classrooms. One of my best friends is currently adjuncting at two schools, in different parts of the city, and she has two kids. She relies on her position to live and so she has to teach a lot just to make ends meet. What's killing her isn't the teaching, which she loves, but the lack of time for research and creative activity, that’s the stuff that really feeds her soul and reminds her of why she went into higher education in the first place.
Nan
Yeah! They’ve created a caste system. And it destroys research fields too! We need that research. So, On top of Jennifer’s research and teaching, she’s also become an agitator! on just these issues!– She is the co-chair of a precarious labor organization within the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, which is a b-i-g professional organization.
Lisa
I love it. Organize! What was on the list of demands?
Nan
Well, for starters, they wanted a meaningful way to be members of the society, so they asked for a seat on the board for a precarious laborer, to make sure that voice is at the table. Then, they asked for something else. Like, a basic thing required for them to work.
Jennifer
Library access. So on a personal basis, I will say, contingent faculty will get a contract that starts, generally about a week or so before the semester starts and closes about a week or so after the semester ends for one semester at a time. Um, so we get library, access to the library for about a week or so then, and then we lose it. And so if we do not have a job the next semester, I have no access to library databases. And so for me as a scholar, right now I have no library access. So if I'm doing some research for a conference presentation, um, in two months, I am going to have to ask friends if I can borrow their username and password, which is becoming increasingly more difficult. I am going to ask people like, can you get me this article because I don't have access. So it's very difficult, depending on what kind of research you do, for you to continue doing research, particularly in the area of like history and humanities if you don't have access to the library.
And you know, it's very difficult to prep for a class when you don't have access to the library. You're supposed to come up with the readings and post the readings and everything beforehand and you can't do that if you don't have library access. So it feels like, um, it's like, here's this job that we'd like you to do and we're just gonna like handicap you, like knock, you know, getcha at the knees, um, before you even start.
Nan
And this is happening at a time that so much more of my research is actually done online. I mean, I used to, you know, only go to archives, really, for my primary sources, but, you know, during the pandemic, I was doing primary research in all these different databases, all these different libraries that I could get access through UW. There's a real shift in the profession that the standards and the access is much more through digital.
How can you even find what's out there if you don't have access before the semester starts?
Jennifer
Right, right. Um, and so it sort of inhibits the creativity you can have, how up-to-date your syllabus might be able to be because you don't have access to the latest sources. The other thing I might, if I want to add is that given the condition in which it is so hard to be a contingent faculty member and that we are losing great people, um, from academia. There are many people who are getting careers in other areas, in these kinds of alt-ac careers as journalists, et cetera. They also would like a way to be connected to the field. They also have perspectives given their job experience and their academic experience that's valuable and want to be able to contribute. And something like having library access, you know, uh, with tied with a university would be incredibly helpful for what I think will be a growing number of precarious laborers who pursue alt ac careers because the career possibilities in academia are so limited.
Nan
It connects too, to something I noticed in the Precarious Labor Organization's, I don't know if it was your mission statement, but you said that your goals were “advocacy and community” and I get advocacy, but I really wanted to hear you talk about community
Jennifer
It felt like we weren't going to get anywhere in terms of organizing and advocating until we supported each other and talked about what in, as a contingent faculty member uh you don't talk about how degrading it is to not have an office. You don't talk about how difficult it is to not have library access in your department. You can't complain easily to the institution that is giving you the most tenuous, of positions. And so we are separated. There were no places or spaces for us to talk about these experiences to talk about the emotional impact of these experiences, to talk about the difficulty of trying… I think there's many people who are contingent faculty who want a tenure track position, but that it is not out there to get, um, and many who don't want it, but want other sorts of options that just don't exist in the world of academia, sort of right now. And so trying to find ways to build community. We realized we weren't going to get very far for advocating if we couldn't get people supported. And that seemed like the most immediate sort of thing to do is try to find ways to get the stories of precarious laborers out there. And that's sort of what motivated the idea to, develop a survey.
We did a survey of 300 media faculty and ask, not only sort of like multiple choice questions, you know, but asked for long-form essay questions to really allow people to express the pain and difficulty in so many ways with being a contingent faculty and to have the people in our organization, in our area of Media Studies to read that and see it. Because it's easy to assume that it's not there.
Nan
Yeah. It's uncomfortable to think about all that suffering.
Jennifer
Absolutely. And, and, and it's, it's difficult. I mean, it's difficult being, you know, one of the people who fit the suit, and you want to be supportive, but what can you, as a tenured faculty, do to support the contingent faculty? Um, it's a lot of fighting, uh, the same kind of battles you fight, but then also fighting them for someone else, as well. Like, you know, fighting to get your contingent faculty an office. Fighting to get them a permanent position. I mean, it really, it depends on extra it's like people willing to go above and beyond. You know, what is a stressful position to begin with
Nan
I guess, I mean, I think, I think that there's also sort of a, I mean, maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but there's sort of a retreat into ignorance. Do you know? It is really painful…
I guess there's a lot of places to stand in relationship to this, but I wouldn't let the faculty off quite as easily as you are.
Jennifer
[laughs] Well, it makes me think about, uh, you know, one of the, one of my favorite groups of college students to teach are freshmen. Right? And I love teaching freshmen, particularly fall semester freshmen. Cause I taught not only, I've been teaching history of broadcasting and things like that, but I also was teaching public speaking cause there was, there were jobs available. And in particular, one of the things I love about public speaking in the fall freshman year is there's this opportunity for when a student first comes to college and they are broken open. Right. And they are broken open, which appeals to like the maternal sort of in me, you know, you know, like wanting to like support them. They're going through a major life transition and they're figuring out who they are, how they want to live in the world, and who to be, and being witness to that is an absolutely amazing privilege.
And it feels like, if you take that kind of situation and apply it to academia, we are in a moment right now in which the, the way that the universities have operated are not going to be sustainable. This system is not going to last. It feels like it's not going to last, it's breaking down. It's not going last, too much longer.
And so there's an opportunity here in the breaking to remake this in a really different way and to remake this in a way that will work for tenured faculty and non-tenured faculty. And I don't, I think the struggle for people in my position or people who are trying to advocate for precarity, or, you know, to support precarity is we need sort of allies to help us in the remaking. Cause this, the university is going to be remade…
Nan
It is.
Jennifer
But who's going to be at the table to do the remaking? Are the interests of tenured faculty going to be represented in the remaking or will they allow sort of contingent faculty to also jump into and say something?
Nan
You know Lisa, from where I sit, Jennifer is absolutely right. We’re at a breaking point here—the model is just completely unsustainable.
Lisa
Yeah, when you pull back for a second, it is insane that it has gotten to this point. Like, “Hey, do you think the people who teach here—who are actually on the front lines of fulfilling the university’s mission—could, you know, check a book out of the library?” I mean, what the hell?!
And, Nan, thank you for saying that faculty are implicated in this. It is the easier path to act like we’re not part of the problem, but the fact is that many of us preach about social justice in the world at large while participating in – and benefiting from – this incredibly exploitative system. And that system is so multi-layered, so baked into federal and state policy — not to mention global capitalism — that most of us choose to throw up our hands and kind of despair over our inability to make substantive change, rather than follow Jennifer’s lead and actually try to take some action.
Nan
I’m with you. And I think it gets to the core of why we started this show. Bringing contingent faculty into university life, treating them with respect, providing them resources—that is, like, the bare minimum we need to be doing. But those of us with the power of a tenure track position, we need to keep advocating for this kind of stuff, and encouraging our colleagues to do the same.
But hey, before we go, did you know I was on Jennifer’s dissertation committee?
Lisa
I did not! How was it?
Nan
Well, it was, uh, a more eventful day than usual...
Bonus Scene (with music)
Jennifer
I've always wanted to say thank you for sitting on my dissertation committee.
I was, uh, very pregnant with my third child, um, when I was going to defend my dissertation. I, uh, bunches of my family would come in and watch children
cause I had a, I had a four-year-old and a two-year-old and I was pregnant. And, um, I had my dissertation date set based on availability of professors and the night about two in the morning, uh, before my 10:00 AM dissertation defense, um, I went into labor. Well, just to labor 10 days early, I remember like, like, you know, it was like this great, like mix I thought, oh, I'm just nervous, you know, day before. I'm just like, it's, it's no problem. And I had, I was up at like two in the morning with my two year old, who had a fever, a 103 degree fever. And so I'm up with him and calming him down and I'm like, it's okay. I can still get five hours of sleep and go to this dissertation defense. It's going to be fine, not a problem. And then my water breaks my husband, my husband wakes up to me, swearing, every swear word I had ever known in my entire life. Like standing over him, just swearing. And we have to go to the, you go to the hospital. And, um, the nurse says, okay, well, I have two questions for you.
She's like one, um, what, you know, what's, what's your name? And what county do you live in? And what's the highest level of education you have attained and start crying, well “I'm like 8 hours away from my PhD….”
And the nurse is like, “well, honey, you're not going to make it.”
I gave birth at 8:30 in the morning. Um, and, uh, my dissertation defense was at 10, right. Or something like that morning. And so at 8:30, you know, as I'm pushing, my husband is on the phone, like “she's not gonna make it.” And, and my, my advisor had a call, you know, a little bit. I think, I think if I remember correctly, you were at like a bus stop or something just about ready to go into campus and you got the call, but no “she's in labor. She's not going to make it…”
Nan
But I am happy to say, that she did successfully defend that dissertation. Just not that day.
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Credits
Lisa
Collegeland is produced by Craig Eley (EE-lee) and Jade Iseri (EYE-siri) Ramos (RAH-mos). Danyel Ferrari (DaeN-YEHL fer-AH-ree) is our researcher and publicist. Our theme music is by Josh Wilson. Other music in the show comes from Blue Dot Sessions. And the show is hosted by me, Lisa Levenstein, along with Nan Enstad.
A special thanks to North Carolina Humanities and the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and Minnesota Transform for their support.