Destinesia

definition: you have applied for so many jobs that you forgot what your core competencies are.

(source: http://artataq.wordpress.com )

I would like to say a few things about core competencies, but I am having trouble.  I don't know if I've forgotten (so I'm not sure you could say I have destinesia...) but I definitely can't be sure they're functional.  I did walk into a classroom of 40 people yesterday and manage to teach a whole session and no one ran from the room screaming, so I suspect it was fine.   Some of them even talked to me after class, so I stand a chance of remembering their names.  It isn't their fault that some of their professors are only tangential to the larger workings of the institution, so I do feel the usual (and entangling) pang of responsibility for their intellectual well being while they are in my care.  Perhaps this is my core competency?  Lately it has felt more like a big anchor tying me to something I love to do but which offers very little (financially or emotionally) back.

I think the larger issue is that there's really not much difference between this type of adjunct work and working at Starbucks.  (At Starbucks, I hear they even have benefits nowadays...) At Starbucks, though, probably, the manager would hover over you to make sure you're doing a good job.  Here, no one seems to notice I'm around and they presume I'm going to figure things out like, oh, say, where my classroom is, how to work the copier, how to put things on reserve, you know, the whole deal.   Perhaps I have been spoiled at my previous non-tenured and tenuous employment situations (one of which lasted ten years), where they actually gave you an employee handbook, eye contact, information, and general support.  Even at the Evil Unmentionable Place where I taught for a year there were actually A LOT of directions and  too much faculty orientation (to be oriented in a place where others were not interested in having me oriented).     

Barbara Garson again, commented that the thing about marginal labor is that you never really feel like you belong to anything, whether it's a replaceable employee at McDonald's or an adjunct professor at a college.   Add to that the oddness of  my other job, which is working from my desk all day with no real contact other than cyber-colleagues and the dog, and you have a very strange existence.   If it were not raining ice, I would be considering moving in to a local coffee shop just for the regular company (in Amherst, of course, if I did this, I would never get any work done, because I'd know too many people).   

I'm going to go work on that list of competencies -- I'll post if I have any luck.  Too bad Artataq didn't offer information about possible treatment or cures.  I'm hoping a big bowl of soup (in lieu of an actual full time job) will help.