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Many people ask me “Denise, you’ve taught now for 8 years. What is the worst experience you’ve had as a college English teacher?”
Okay, well, I’m not asked this every day, but, as Tom Waits would say, often enough that I would remark on it. And as I ponder this question, I go all the way back to 1999 and Florida State.
I taught at 8 a.m., and some of the students were still drunk on Monday mornings – no, wait, those were the good old days! I loved teaching there! One would assume it would have been at one of the most notorious party schools in the nation (and I think the worst the first year I was there) but my worst experience teaching was in Milwaukee, at a small Catholic school (“in the Franciscan tradition”) which will not be named at the moment.
In the summer of 2003, I was hired by Marquette University to be a part time lecturer, teaching one section of sophomore lit and one section of freshman comp. I was thrilled to have an interview at another school because I thought with two part time teaching gigs I’d be able to quit my job at Red Lobster. Unfortunately, this other school paid for shit and I wasn’t able to quit waiting tables, but that’s another story for another day. I was interviewed by a wonderful teacher named Barbara, and she hired me to teach two sections of freshman comp. I loved the department secretary, Sr. Marie—English shared her with history. She was one of the two only Franciscans I met at the school; the other Franciscan sister was in charge at the copy center. One morning I saw Sr. Marie in the copy center at 7:30. She was copying from many large, heavy-looking history books, the pages marked with post-its. I asked her if she was making handouts for students and she said no, that a history professor was writing a paper for a conference and had asked her to copy certain pages out of library books, and I wondered, “What the fuck is the matter with this place? What kind of dick would have the secretary do his own personal stuff? If a woman of God is treated so shabbily, what is in store for me?”
Fall semester was sucky there—it seemed that the school was so desperate for students that they’d accept anyone, and it was much more challenging to teach there than at Marquette, which actually has standards for acceptance, and even tougher than Florida State, which also has standards (at least, comparatively). Also, there was an unusually high amount of athletes accepted most certainly on talent alone, including several English soccer players who were cheeky but not particularly intelligent. (It’s really confusing to listen to a stupid Brit—the accent doesn’t match the content of what they’re saying).
So I felt robbed—I had a terrible schedule (8 a.m. & 2 p.m.), the school was so far from my apartment that I couldn’t go home in between, I still had to wait tables four nights a week to pay bills, and students knew that I was in my office all those hours between 9 and 2 and they came; geesh, did they come. Some wanted help with papers, some wanted help with other classes, some just missed their moms and big sisters.
All adjuncts shared an office in the dank basement, conveniently located across from the copy center and next to security. Adjunct pay is notoriously bad, so take notoriously bad and remove a third, and that’s what I earned . . . Barbara had been acting chair, and the actual chair was back from sabbatical. The actual chair was not nearly as capable (or, as it turned out, sane) as Barbara, which didn’t work out well for me at all.
My 8 a.m. comp class was more like Intro to Fiction. The students got to write papers on literature instead of the typical argument-type composition assignments. This meant that I got to choose a novel, and what better novel has there ever been than Jane Eyre? I was so stoked! There was a student in the class who wanted to be called Cookie. And Cookie skipped class. And Cookie didn’t turn things in. And Cookie’s daughter had medical problems. And the next month, Cookie had medical problems. Cookie didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked about her daughter’s condition. I was happy when I didn’t see Cookie from Halloween to Thanksgiving. Not a very Franciscan attitude I know, but there it is.
Cookie showed up in my office at 9 a.m. (she had missed that morning’s class, of course) right after Thanksgiving with a draft of a paper that had been due, oh, around Halloween. It was a mess. It was a summary of a short story (“The Yellow Wallpaper,” I do believe). There was no thesis, no argument, no evidence. It was essentially a sixth grade book report. I told Cookie I’d be happy to offer her feedback about her writing, but that she had to understand that she had already failed the course. She was so far behind that the late policy on papers had turned them into zeros. We had an attendance policy, and she’d missed way too many times to pass. The registrar’s office had already been informed. There was simply no way.
Cookie started to yell. She started to wave her arms. She got in my face. “You were supposed to teach me how to write!” Cookie bellowed. Cookie was scary—she was bigger than me, and I’m no waif. Cookie, to put it mildly, had a cow. She had such a cow that the security personnel heard her and intervened on my behalf. A report was filed. Cookie was told by security to stay away from me.
I went directly upstairs to the English office, the office with windows where the full-time professors with light teaching loads and tenure were housed. I spoke with the chair about the situation (not Barbara who hired me, but the actual chair). Chair told me that I couldn’t tell a student he/she was not allowed to come to class anymore. “But she can’t pass!” I declared.
“It doesn’t matter,” Chair told me.
“She scares me; security had to remove her physically from my office. I feel in danger,” I continued.
Chair did not care. I had to allow Cookie to come to class. Cookie came to see Chair. Chair told Cookie she could continue to come to class. Cookie, occasionally, continued to come to class.
One day, we were discussing Mr. Rochester’s crazy wife up in the attic. One student, a nursing major, asked if Bertha could have had syphilis. Intrigued, I asked her where she got that idea. She explained how they had been discussing in one of her bio courses the symptoms of syphilis and how it, if left untreated, causes insanity. I was impressed that she had made the connection. I allowed the discussion to continue. It was one of the best discussions that that class had mustered up about that book – it was perhaps the best discussion of the entire semester, studded as the class was with tired, overfed, sub-par intellects.
Cookie failed that class. Of course she did. She turned nothing in. But she was allowed to be there, a privilege she took advantage of only occasionally, but she did attend the day of teacher evaluations. When I received my evaluations, several weeks later (typed out verbatim by our department secretary, Sr. Marie) I saw these words:
“Wurst teacher ever. Led discussions on sexually transmited deseases. I go to cathalic school so I don’t have to here about sex and sifalis. Wasted time and money.”
Spring semester came and went. It wasn’t fun, but it was teaching experience. When Chair asked if I wanted to teach in the fall, I said yes, as long as it didn’t interfere with my Marquette schedule, but didn’t yet sign a contract.
Summer came. Then Chair started calling me, but not leaving messages. Then emailing me. No questions, just “call me.” When I returned from a visit to Karma in California, there was an email several days old requesting I call Chair. I called Chair, who proceeded to scold me. She told me that I was expected to call within a few hours when I received an emailed request to do so. She told me that even though it was summer vacation, she was still my boss. I realized at that moment that the chair was not simply unsupportive, as I’d already thought because of the case with Cookie, but that she was also a certified nut bar.
I told her I would not be coming back the next school year, and that I would prefer not to have communications with her. A week later, I received a letter in the mail from her, thanking me for my service, but informing me that I would not be invited back to teach the following fall. Like I said: Nut bar.
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Denise
