Moving Out of the US to Switzerland...

It has been some time since I have written a blog post, and in a way I am not sure how to do it on this site because I am no longer "teaching in the trenches" (the current title of this site). I abruptly gave up my secure and wonderful tenured teaching position at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake, Washington, and moved my husband, 2 dogs, horse and goods across the ocean and some land, to Switzerland. In order to do this all, I sold my sweet little house in San Diego, where the original blog posts were all written, and sold many other belongings and a second house. This might sound all very fancy from an outsider's point of view, but I can assure you it is not. Let me explain.

I have been searching for years for where I belong, and now that I have landed in Switzerland, I am not sure this was the precise answer. Likely because, as some more enlightened person might point out to me, I should belong to myself and then I will be home anywhere. Fine. Point taken. Looking back though, San Diego was my spot in many ways. Tons of events, endless trails to ride and hike, good neighbors and friends, the Pacific, and a backyard with a view to a canyon. But working three jobs was the pits. And our neighborhood, Mira Mesa, was getting more crowded by the year. And I wanted tenure. So I left gorgeous San Diego for a tenure track job in Moses Lake, Washington.

Moses Lake, the town, was dreary. I remember when my husband saw it for the first time. We entered town on the main drag, and the whole car went quiet. No exclamations of, "It's very quaint!" or "This reminds me of little towns in the midwest", just quiet. I ventured something like, "I know it isn't a cute small town". He reassured me, "No, no, it's ok. Look, there's a lake!" Turned out the lake, the one the town was named after, was polluted and swimming in it could get you "swimmer's bumps". And the town had terrible water planning which meant water was projected to be a major scarcity within 10 years. The City Council was and is responsible for this debacle. But as we settled in I loved teaching at Big Bend and puttering around in our huge yard. My colleagues were amazing, my students were mostly wonderful, and I was growing a department in a field, Communication Studies, that I love. My professional life, for once, was exactly what I had been looking for. But the town itself was a hellscape. Trash everywhere, burned out hunks of cars on side streets, people wandering through desert shrub in an opiate haze from the mall to the railroad tracks to the lake and back. Yes, there were gorgeous homes, but in many ways this made things worse. The disparity between the estate style living and trailer parks and tents was hard to take. It was a small town with a Mad Max vibe, complete with a cyclist who would make his way around town with a visor, grimy helmet, cape, and long boots. I finally had achieved career and financial security, but it seemed like all of the off kilter energy of the US had landed squarely in Moses Lake. From Trump rallies, to heroin overdoses, to gun crimes...it was all here. So this wasn't going to work as a place to grow old. And to make a finer point on it, my sister and her family moved to Switzerland in 2021, sending back reminders of a place where people seemed to actually care about where they live.

Switzerland is the land of my mother, and my father's parents. It is the land of childhood summers and many wonderful cousins and kin. For me this wasn't the place of banks and gold, but of dank old cow barns and high golden wheat fields. Though it would be remiss of me to not mention that my sister's life is one of a vastly different scale from mine financially, and so there was not a lot of insecurity as her family made the move, but it was a task as international moves are, so I saw at least how some of the logistics would go. Not long after she moved, in late 2021, our brother Bernard was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. We sat helplessly by as he lost much of his acuity and physical ability. Thankfully he seemed to gain even more of his even keeled temperament which disposed him to avoid alarm at his situation. My sister and I made many visits. My heart ached as I watched my brother slip away. The person who had taught me how to drive a stick shift, who had helped me through heart ache, and who was endlessly curious and patient simultaneously. During a family get together in Santa Barbara, where we all surrounded my brother with the love he deserved, occurred what is now referred to by family members as "the chicken coop intervention".  It was an intense conversation about futures while an unexpected hailstorm thundered on the corrugated plastic overhead. We hashed out the reasons my spouse and I should relocate to Switzerland. The main themes being that the US was increasingly unstable, and that Moses Lake was too far afield in terms of connection, and was also depressingly ugly. I had been waffling until that moment because I didn't want to leave my job or my brother. I went home to Moses Lake tormented by indecision though I wanted to make the move. Then, a month later, my brother found his own way home, whatever that is, slipping from the world we all shared into the unknown. The vacuum of his death was instant. I felt my own hold loosen on this life I had always known in the US even as I grieved leaving the landscapes that had raised me. The coastline of California, the great Redwoods, the wide L.A. freeways, the dusty red dirt of the Sierra foothills, and the great Bay Bridge. I thought about hauling my horse to some remote wilderness ride, looking in the review of my Dodge and watching the dust kick up behind my trailer with satisfaction. So off to Idaho I went with a friend and spent a few days camping and riding and talking and relishing the expansive views and never-ending skies. It was part of my long goodbye to the US.

Though I grieved these landscapes as I made my goodbyes, I also reminded myself that I didn't live in them. The wilderness was a respite I sometimes had opportunities to enjoy. However, I lived in the world of people and towns where the results of decisions made far up in the rungs of government came to their final destination. My husband agreed that it was time to go. I still felt uncertain, but mostly this was my grief. I was losing access to things like the Big Horn Mountains, and I was putting important friendship through the stress of distance. I was grieving 4 adorable chickens I would re-home to a friend, and a garden and home that I had put many hours into. I was quitting a job I had always dreamed of. But despite my grief I knew that it was time to go. That chicken coop intervention in Santa Barbara had opened up a portal to other possibilities. And thanks to my Swiss citizenship, and thanks to the support of family we would be able to move. 

In the Spring of 2023 I acquired tenure even as I was planning my move abroad. It felt duplicitous of course, but I was compelled to leave Moses Lake. Besides I'd seen others stay because they loved the college and their lives were not what I imagined for myself. The worst was telling colleagues I valued and with whom I had made personal and professional plans. But, as is typically the case, they supported me because they were and are, in fact, very good colleagues. They understood.

As I write this it is February 2024 and I have been in Switzerland for nearly 5 months. It has taken me this long to loosen my grip on my Moses Lake life, the fruit trees I lovingly planted in my backyard, the cozy office space I had set up for myself, the committees and department I had nurtured, and so much more. It has taken me this time to also finally let go of San Diego. I am here now. I am the principal of a beautiful little private international school called The British School, Bern. I lead a team of fantastic educators and they are stretching my knowledge and skills. I have purpose here. I trust that the financial instability we are currently experiencing will turn into financial security. In the interim I don't have to lead gun shooting drills. I will always miss my friends, especially ones I have known since childhood, but I missed them in Washington too. I will always love the grittiness of the US and in particular its wilderness where you feel small and inconsequential. But I can always visit those people and those places. When I wasn't in Switzerland I missed its landscapes and my family and friends. So now I am here and here to stay. The financial leap was such I cannot afford to go back to the US. I feel uncertain as to whether or not what we ended up doing was "the smart thing to do", but we are in it now. My heart is full, even if my pockets are empty.

Going skiing with some of my students at The British School Bern.

On the path, traveling to the land of the tenures - (written at the start of COVID and never published until now)

 The call came. "Barbara, this is Katy* calling from Big Bend Community College". 

A pause. 

Me, "Hi, how are you Katy"? 

"I am doing well, thank you Barbara. Listen, I am calling you to let you know that we are very excited to offer you the job as our Communication instructor at Big Bend Community College". 

My heart didn't race, it stood still. Just a fraction of a pulse it waited to see if it could continue, as if life itself had been suspended. I inhaled, pushing through the shift between a yesterday of uncertainty, and a tomorrow of tenure. "Three on a tree", I thought for no particular reason except that my brain does that sometimes, a self-protective mechanism of sorts I assume. Re-framing focus just in case this was a joke. Like that time I got into grad school and got my PhD. 

"Oh wow Kathleen! Thank you. That is wonderful news". I stopped. Wasn't I suppose to do something professional, like delay my acceptance? Well surly I should talk to my spouse? Make sure he was on board if I accepted? 

"We really loved your interview. We feel you are the perfect candidate for what we need. It is very exciting to be able to offer you this job". Kathleen's tone was unvarnished joy. I wanted to reach out and hug her. 

"Thank you so much. I loved meeting you guys and I really loved the school. The whole interview process was wonderful. Listen, do you mind if I talk to my spouse? I want to be able to just let him know about the offer. Since it is Friday, I would get back to you first thing Monday"! 

The dean stumbled a little then. Some of the air left the call, and there was room to move, to think. "Oh, um, sure. Just let us know!" Her disappointment was subtle, expressed as a wee stumble in the exchange I felt like an ass. I was on board with the joy and I should have just let it rip. But now I had committed to accepting by Monday, so I thanked her and got off the phone. Within the next 5 minutes I had called my partner, my sister, and my best friend, and I had texted my family in Switzerland via WhatsApp. And there I sat in my shimmering expectancy that would need wait until Monday morning. 

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Here I am, six months later, packing up home in San Diego, California. But I am not just packing up the things (clothes, furniture, knick knacks, etc), I am also packing myself up. Re-packing myself. Unpacking myself. So strange to go through the material of your life, the things that mark you as you. The trash and the treasures. What if I didn't have these things? That photo album that depicts my 6th birthday on a sunny day in my childhood backyard, parents watching as I laugh with my friends. (Who took these photos so my parents could participate in the festivities they put together for me?) The cabinet full of lipsticks, lotions, brushes, and all manner of personal care? What if I didn't have the extra set of sheets I don't need? Or the gorgeous mask from Zimbabwe that my sister brought back for me from her travels? And the books. So many books. I am awash in books, mostly academic and some that are more of the pleasure variety. Packing and unpacking is a reckoning with my past, with what matters to me, with what I have let go and what I cling to. It is a reckoning with my consumption as well. My carelessness. 

As much as I hold onto gifts and heirlooms, I am also guilty of adding unnecessary plastic, glass, mineral, chemical, dye, cotton and god knows what else to my existence. Of depleting the earth of its resources. And now we are moving from a 3 bedroom/2 bath house to a 4 bedroom/2 bath house. I am running the course of capitalism through the suburban landscape built to funnel its avarice. The neighbors however, are very nice. There is a small town sensibility to this place. And I love the feeling of the countryside being just around the corner. The huge yard. And my job beckons. One job. Not two jobs. Not three jobs. Not running from campus to campus. One single teaching job. I will also be responsible for guiding the department. For developing its trajectory. I was built for this moment. I crave this responsibility.

* Name changed for privacy 

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Liberal Bias in the Classroom - Apparently Not

A recent study written about this past summer shows that conservative students are not discriminated against. Rather "that high school may play more to the strengths of conservative students, who often prefer a straightforward, right-or-wrong assessment style. Liberal students, the authors conjecture, fare better in the qualitative work prioritized in higher education, especially in the humanities."

In my grading of student work I look for their reading comprehension, their use and understanding of field specific terms, their use of claims and application of evidence, and the ability to apply critical thinking (looking for multiple points of view, understanding socio-historical contexts, etc) when assessing conclusions and evidence. Students who provide blunt assessments in their essays don't do as well.

Link to the study:

NO, PROFESSORS AREN'T DISCRIMINATING AGAINST CONSERVATIVE STUDENTS A major study led by a lifelong Republican finds no evidence that professors are deliberately giving conservative students bad grades.

Evaluations

The season is upon us when students evaluate their college and university professors. The evaluations promise to quantify for the institution the quality of the professors they've hired from the very people that will be graded by them. Unfortunately for said professors, it is at this juncture that this body of evaluating students will have a fairly good idea of what grade they will receive. No small reason for how an evaluation is ultimately written and scored.

It is a fraught relationship that the Prof engages on from the moment she steps in front of the classroom because if she is an adjunct, which she most likely is, these evaluations not only can determine whether she is re-hired, but also can determine whether she will be hired at all. Anywhere. And in retrospect it is easy to see all the compromises one has made so that this very moment at the end of the semester won't be brutal. Because being an adjunct is no minor affair. And the goal is to emerge from the endless cycle of freeway driving, massive loads of grading, minimal job security, and squeezing in job applications, with a full-time, tenure track position. So compromises are a reality. As is grade grubbing.

The rearview on a semester (or quarter) proves unpleasant, if not downright shameful. But there is a clear trajectory. So let's start with a slice of what goes down. Let's say an assignment for giving a speech requires a full-sentence outline that outlines what the speaker will talk about, and let's say that not only is this outline part of the written description of the assignment on the syllabus, it is also gone over in class lecture, is practiced in a workshop making up an entire class session, and is available as a sample on the class's online webpage. This seems like ample assistance on a full-sentence outline, and yet what is turned in, albeit by a minority of students, is an essay style paper, not an outline of any kind. Not a full-sentence outline, nor any kind of outline at all, just an essay, a category of paper that is explicitly cited in class as NOT the way to create an outline because, well, it is not an outline, it is an essay. How does this happen? Well, usually this handful of students proves to be a hardy sort that don't find class valuable on workshop days and will skip (unless you offer points for attending the workshop) and feel they work better on their own (I assume), or they don't use the resources on the class's webpage, or they don't attend lecture, or they don't open their book to look at the samples in their...you get the idea. And they tend to be repeat performers. You spot them early on, lurking in the back of the classroom when they show up, often trying to sneak onto their phones (I have a no technology rule in class unless we are using that technology), and typically leaving as soon as class is over. They are there by force, whatever that force is. And I am not unsympathetic, however minimal input logically results in minimal output. No hard feelings, nothing personal, not a big deal. They aren't into school, and not everybody is. But when their grades are finalized, those evaluative letters that stamp them as having succeeded, held on, or failed, this is where these hardy bunches come to life.

"Why is this a C?" (I was being generous, in reality it was really a D but I wanted to avoid this confrontation). "Did you read the feedback?" I ask. "No, I didn't see it.", or "Yeah, but I wanted you to explain it." or "Can I do extra credit to make up for this grade?", or "I didn't know I had to turn in an outline.", or "Can I email you an outline later today?" It is relentless. Some (many) teachers assign extra credit that will help dilute this problem. They offer extra easy assignments so that students can make up the points they missed in doing actual assignments, assignments that are part of tackling the material in the class. Extra credit points are student attitude buyouts. Some of these extra credit opportunities do so brazenly. I know of one English teacher who offers her students extra credit points for donating items to Goodwill. Donating clothes, not even writing about the donation experience, just donating the items. This way students who didn't put in the work can add points to their overall score and, in some cases, end up with an A that doesn't at all reflect what they have actually learned.

Then the evaluations. At the end of the year this same group of students has the opportunity to evaluate the professor. The very same professor who did, or did not, offer extra credit. The professor who didn't let them turn in assignments late. The professor who said no to cellphones in the classroom because studies have shown time and again their presence lowers learning. The same professor who didn't re-open the exam online they missed, an exam that was clearly on the syllabus schedule, announced in class, and open for over 24 hours. The disgruntled bunch makes their feelings known. The customer service was not to their satisfaction. Gratefully the rest of the class is responding to the evaluations as well, and all the smaller concessions made did help the overall relationship, but nonetheless compromises are made. No marking students down for being late, even if they are late by over 30 minutes, letting assignments be re-submitted if they are willing to put in the work, letting some glaring errors slide, using class time to do homework for the class itself, giving out points if 90% of the class completes the evaluations (so not just your unhappy students respond), and on and on. Some of these concessions taken singly are really not a big deal, but taken en masse they feel rather damning. It is as if one backs away from expectation, from radical transformation that can happen in a classroom, and from pushing students to dig deeper with concentrated attention. Because to do these things is to ask students to be uncomfortable, to engage with the work, and to demand that they see themselves as students not as consumers.

Evaluations serve a purpose. They are needed. They can provide a lens onto what a teacher can do to improve. Even more purposeful however are peer evaluations. When other instructors review other instructors this, done correctly, can be a way to provide mentorship and instill a sense of culture about pedagogical values and strategies. But as it stands now students evaluations are weaponized, and worse the students know it. And some use this power. I know of one lecturer who was accused of racism because he was lecturing on the historical significance of Black Lives Matter. There was a student who wasn't doing well in the class and he was upset about his grade, and he was upset that he had to learn about Black Lives Matter, part of the course's curriculum. This student was White, and the lecturer is White, but the evaluation doesn't identity, and the student knew that. So he used the evaluation to target the lecturer. When the institution received the evaluation that accused the lecturer of racism they assumed that the student who accused him of racism was a student of color, and he was never hired again. It is a permanent blemish on his record merely because in doing his duty in educating the students on the important social, cultural, and political movement of Black Lives Matter, not because of the quality of his instruction.

I have been lucky so far to have mostly good reviews so that the scattered less flattering reviews are not wreaking havoc. I say this only because I don't want this blog to be seen as a rant by an angry adjunct. The evaluation process is deeply flawed, and it is not getting any better. If the goal is to really evaluate instructors, there are better ways to accomplish this so that 1) instructors are truly evaluated, and 2) so that instructors feel they can truly teach without making the numerous compromises that many of know we make and talk about with each other over cheap, warm beers. Education is valuable. It is critical even, especially in a democracy. And there are many pieces to education, and not all of them, or even most of them, are in the college or university classroom, but some of the pieces are indeed there. Educators are supposed to get their students to push past their own horizons, to expand their consciousness, to find a more personalized drive, to work with one another, and to make the curriculum their own. These skills transfer into "real life" beyond the classroom. Citizens need to know how to do research, how to learn, and how to work with others. Evaluations are leaving the best educators, the most passionate, at unbelievable risk. Tenure is needed. One need look no further than the adjunct experience with evaluations to understand this.

Teaching Interpersonal Communication Means Being Interpersonal

Another semester has ended at the local community college where I teach as an adjunct instructor. For the 6th semester in a row (or has it been more?) I have taught the course Interpersonal Communication. And as is often with these types of things, I have no real academic background in the subject, nonetheless it is the mainstay of most Communication departments. And I am a PhD so theoretically I am supposed to have the academic chops to master such a course. A course that is often a blend of Psychology, Communication Studies, and Sociology. With a pinch of personal experiences tempered by years of reading, studying and research that, while not "interpersonal communication" focused per se, nonetheless often involve interpersonal communication. To say nothing of the wealth of personal experience one acquires on the subject as an aware and empathic, if not slightly neurotic, human. So here I am, with Spring 2018 at a close and another Interpersonal Communication class come and gone, or two of them to be precise. And it has been a doozy, a whirlwind of emotions.

Let me say, first and foremost, I love teaching. I love interacting with students and getting to know them. I love the fact that I learn as I teach. That is probably the superpower of teaching really, that one's knowledge grows as one's knowledge is 1) being held to account and 2) is being tested, and failing or succeeding at that testing at a rapid fire rate. Part of this process however necessarily, I think, involves a deeply personal commitment to engaging with not just the students and the material, but with one's self. Which brings me to this moment.

Part of how I teach is by using personal examples. It holds up to the light my own ideas and theories, my interpretations and understandings of the field's literature. It seems intellectually honest somehow to bring theory and "real-life" together in this way. Plus students seem to find it interesting, as long as I don't stray off course too badly. The only ones who appreciate major subject divergence are those hoping to breeze through the class, but thankfully this is not the norm in the student populations I've interacted with. Recently however I have begun to wonder about the efficacy and sagacity of these personal, real-life examples. I mean, perhaps I am revealing too much. Perhaps, while there are plenty that provide positive feedback regarding this type of pedagogy, there are enough students of the other persuasion. The student who feels that this is a burden of some kind, imposed on them as they sit, trapped in my classroom. Or they oppose the theatricality of it. Because, if I was to be honest, just as with any storytelling-qua-lesson, there is a performative aspect. And then there is just the plain exhaustion of putting your own story forward in a kind of cross-examination, where my students and I intersect our critical vision at the heart of one of my missives. There is an emotionally draining quality to producing personal stories as sites of interpersonal communication analysis. But then this week happened and all my misgivings melted away.

"Dear Professor Bush, I want to tell you how much your class meant to me. I learned so much that I can use in my own life, and I really loved hearing your personal stories. They were always interesting and helped me learn."

Etc. I received nearly 10 such emails, to say nothing of some of the face-to-face communication that also referenced my narratives. It turns out that, according to what I am gathering from the feedback, that personal stories act as a way of accessing 1) the material, 2) sustained interest and 3) the instructor. And the students' own final stories! So revealing. So touching. Layers of depth that anchored directly into concepts we covered. It is not an understatement to say I wiped away many tears as I read their final assignments.

So while the immediate answer to the conundrum I was having, "Should I continue using my personal life as a way of clarifying theoretical concepts?" is now a resounding yes, more has been revealed. Students, we all know, often desire a connection with their instructors. But what does that connection look like? How do we understand this connection in the middle of a professional relationship? I think the answer could be, in service to it. In other words, using personal transparency to convey concepts, especially of the ilk found in an Interpersonal Communication class (i.e. self-disclosure, self-esteem, stereotypes, etc) benefit from professorial transparency. A willingness to test  the applicability of theoretical knowledge within the roughshod landscape of a real life, in this case, the life of the professor. Additionally, this opens up the atmosphere in a class, important when tackling Interpersonal Communication, as students attempt their own version of what they see enacted for them.

To push forward with this kind of pedagogy certainly has its pitfalls. Undesired scrutiny by those who already institutionally evaluate you and now, potentially, have more information at their disposal to discredit you with. An insensitive response to a raw experience put deliberately on the "lab table", by you, for public dissection. Or downright disinterest or disregard. Nonetheless, there is power here. There is the power of vulnerability and courage and academic integrity when forced to contend with the theoretical, in real-time with the actual. There is the power of humility. Of failure. Of showing students what it means to live as honestly and aware as possible. And, by all accounts, they seem to love it. The few who, withstanding, do not. So I move forward, emboldened with my emails and interpersonal encounters, to continue to offer up my stories for scrutiny when appropriate and helpful. We live in a time where I think we cannot underestimate the importance of the humanizing experience and learning power of the deliberately interpersonal.

Dissertation defense - March 10, 2017

So here we are, nearly eight years after I started graduate school (September 2008) and I am looking at the final mountain, the biggest Alp, or, perhaps the smallest mole heap, my dissertation defense. Spring sounds promising, so perhaps it will run according to the romance associated with spring. Hope, renewal, new life and endless possibility. I am not going to lie. This is what I am banking on. I try not to have too many expectations and visions of silver lined clouds but I'm so excited it is difficult to keep a level head. My mom said I was always this way. It irritates some of those closest to me. I know. And it doesn't end with my March 10th date. Likely there will be edits. And then I have to find a job. I HAVE to find a job, and I mean ASAP. I took a loan from my brother and sister-in-law to finish up this last year. I have stretched that loan to within an inch of its life. But I also GET to look for a job. I am thrilled that I will be able to concentrate on getting a job. Not anxiously searching, throwing my curriculum vitae or resume at this job and that job, hoping for a bite, while I keep my dissertation open in a Word doc that I am continuously updating and working on.

Now that I have a minute to reflect, I do have some advice regarding the finishing process. On top of all the other blogs and websites out there, that is. But here goes:

1. Don't endlessly do miniature edits, this is not your magnum opus, but write everyday and read everyday
2. Print your favorite/most important articles, put them in a binder by year of publication and know them
3. Don't get discouraged if your committee never (nearly never) responds. Keep your eye on the prize. Stay in the solution (write/edit). Eventually they will respond because they want you off of their backs and their graduate student list.
4. Keep contacting your committee, especially near the last 1/2 year
5. Go to a dissertation formatting workshop. The whole thing seems a lot less scary afterwards.
6. Whether as a break during the middle of the day, or first thing in the morning, or the last thing before you go to bed, do something entirely unrelated to your diss. 
7. Don't focus on people or listen to people who constantly complain about their process. I mean a little is ok, be a friend of course, but if there is no sun in their sky, this last part of your process needs to take precedent. You can come back to them when you are done and let them yell and scream all they want. Chances are they will still not be done.
8. Have a plan...you can either have your every single day laid out (I don't do this, that would drive me nuts) or have highlighted finish lines on your calendar that you hold yourself to.
9. Sleep
10. Exercise

(Me and my baby cousin testing our post race happiness levels)

No matter what. Once you get this far. Hang on. You've got this.

Surviving as an Adjunct and ABD Student

I am in my final dissertation process. And it is brutal. The field work is done. I mean, I could have done more field work, but when your field is Switzerland, well, you might understand when I say, the financial logistics of that, even with family, are tenuous. I have a full "shitty first draft" that has taken a lot to put together, but nothing that isn't doable. You just have to write. And write. And write. That's the gig though, and I am ok with that. What is taking even more time to put together, however, is the committee. I mean, they are in place, no problem there, but getting them to respond in a timely way is near to impossible. I'm almost in stalking mode, since multiple emails haven't done the trick. My colleagues are now engaged with helping me edit my dissertation in a distributed labor fashion (i.e. chapters are divvied out so that no one person has to read the whole thing). This is a kindness that is truly humbling and no words can do justice for what their input means to me. Between the lengthy response times of my committee however, and laborious grading loads, means that I linger in ABD (all but dissertation) mode, limping along on my thin adjunct salary. I am in the worst financial straits I've been in since I was 26 years old and living on my own in Los Angeles and making 9.50/hour (in 1997), nearly 20 years ago.

This is the crux. I cannot afford, time-wise, to continue to adjunct at the community college level and work as a TA at the university. This is just too much while trying to complete my dissertation. Virtually no writing happens that way because one is endlessly preparing for classes, grading and attending meetings. Plus, of course, you need time to be able to go grocery shopping, commute, get a little sleep and maybe stop for a minute every other day or so to sniff the roses, so to speak. In order to be able to write I gave up being at TA at the university. This cut my commute almost entirely as the community college where I continue to work is only 3 miles from home.  In order to be able to do this I took a loan, through family, to supplement my income. This is a huge blessing even though it will be a monster to pay back. You see, the news is true, you cannot live on an adjunct salary. It is, when I break it down, about $8.50/hour, which is less than what I was making in 1997. And I live in San Diego, CA, one of the most expensive cities in the United States. Very depressing. But it must be done, so I do.

Survival on an adjunct salary is about living within one's means, having multiple jobs, a supportive network, and personal well of emotional, physical and spiritual stamina. I budget and I don't go out often on my own. I have 3 classes and eventually, when I am done with my dissertation, I will have 6-8 classes on 2-3 campuses. I have friends and family who are generous and understanding. I have a partner who is a saint. The emphasis on a solid network cannot be over-estimated or over-stated. It is the single key that has made all the difference to what otherwise would have been abject poverty. Abject poverty isn't just not having the means to get by, though it certainly is that too, it is about isolation and living on the edge of financial ruin if anything goes wrong. So you find emotional and spiritual stamina wherever you can. In my case I find this in the classroom and in staying connected. Engaging with students and constantly tweaking classroom material that is relevant to them, is a way of generating an ongoing conversation that is intellectually rich and dynamic.  I also find emotional and spiritual stamina in my connection to people and places. The expansiveness of the ocean, the birds in the canyon behind my house and the myriad of friends, neighbors and family, to name a few. The physical stamina I find in my daily routine of running with my dog. We run the neighborhood early every morning and find our zen in a waking world. She keeps my heart and legs strong.

I'm not sure how much longer I can do this. I want more than just survival. For now I have prioritized my dissertation work and I take projects on as they come. Knocking them down one at a time. Once I am officially Dr. Bush I will try and find work that is more financially sustaining, even if it isn't in the classroom, though this is where I know I am my best. I am a survivor. I have a lot to offer. Somehow, someway, I've got this.