"But some people get tenure-track jobs, don't they?"


   "My first month as a full-time instructor . . . was marked by major loneliness. The loneliness came from the way almost no one would speak to me in the faculty workroom. The instructors seemed intent on preserving their private pain and entered the room collating their personal humiliations. They sat down on the hard plastic chairs to coddle these hurts like insane, deformed kittens. If we had spoken, we would've had to admit to one another how broken and defeated we were. . . .

   I guess we all sensed, rightly or wrongly that we were made for better things than this: for students who would come to class prepared, who came from decent high schools, and who could understand what we were saying if we said it clearly. Instead, we had students on the sophomore level who did not know the moon causes the tides or who, halfway into a semester of political science, would ask the instructor, "But what is government, anyway?" They weren't questioning authority; they did not know what authority was.

   After having survived the ego thrashing required to receive a PhD, if we couldn't feel entitled to teach at Harvard or even a good state school, maybe we could at least have offices and be treated as if we were trained professionals who knew what we were doing. But such was not the case: faculty meetings were all about how we were not turning in some form on time or not giving out our home number to students. . . .

   After a few months of trying to get a good discussion going in class, I gave up. . . . I had always prided myself on my ability to get ninety percent of any class to contribute to the flow and debate, but my new job beat me down. It wasn't that my students were mean or bad people; they were mostly friendly and attractive. They just didn't understand. Anything, it seemed.


So I had them write in class much of the time and stopped asking too many probing questions or expecting probing answers. I think this was a good solution, because they certainly need writing practice, but something was lost. What can you do with a college class that doesn't know what hierarchy or enchantment means (I mean the literal definitions -- they've never heard the words)?

   My questions in class now have to do with vocabulary and basic reading comprehension. My sophomore literature classes are now all about basic reading skills. Anything beyond that is asking many students to use an analytic thought process beyond their grasp. . . ."

Martin Scott, "Pagers, Nikes, and Wordsworth," in Profession 2002 (MLA ), 92-93.