My friend Adrianne and I keep in regular intimate touch by instant messaging throughout the day. We both spend a lot of time at our computers working, and both have cable internet, and we find that chit-chatting by IM is very compatible with childcare. Unlike when we talk on the phone, we can carry on conversations with our kids while intermittently typing, or leap up to take care of quick kid needs ("Mama, I have to pee and poop.") and make it back to the computer in time to continue a conversation with little or no lag. That sometimes the needs of our children cause one of us to simply wander away without notice is OK, too. We're very forgiving.
I'm surprised by the depth of the conversations we manage to have by typing. In recent weeks, we've discussed everything from what we know and don't know about our aging parents' wishes for end-of-life care, and what we should do about our ignorance, to how best to react to scary toddler utterances (like this from Eric last week, on the way to drop him at a friend's so the parents could see a movie: "Sometimes people are good to me, but sometimes people are not good to me, and then you should stay with me").
A few weeks ago, during one of our chats, Adrianne told me, "You hate your job." I was offended. "I do not hate my job," I typed huffily. "I admit that I find some aspects of it stressful and annoying, but overall I like what I do."
I was wrong. I am three weeks into a new semester of teaching Composition II: Argumentative Writing in the Lansing Community College Virtual College, and I hate it. I am irritated by my students and deeply troubled by a serious problem in how our department evaluates student work (it would not be politic for me to say more on that subject in a public forum with my real name on it. But I am thinking about beginning an anonymous blog to give myself a place to vent about the egregious stupidity and unfairness of the portfolio system by which our department decides which students pass the class and which fail). I don't want to simply rag on my students, either, though one wishes they would act like grownups once in awhile. Some do; maybe even most. But it is the irritatingly immature minority who flood my in-box with rude e-mails seven days a week. That I read and respond to student e-mail only three afternoons a week is one of the many pieces of information I've given them that they've ignored. When I check my e-mail on Monday, there will be at least one several-days-old message with the subject line "Need answer right away," multiple copies of the same message from the same student because she thinks my failure to answer in under an hour means I haven't gotten it, at least one question I've already answered on the course website, two messages complaining about the unfairness of a course policy, two bitching about grades, and one from a student I've never heard from before who has just figured out that he can't play on the baseball team if he doesn't carry a certain number of credits and who is pretty sure he can just catch up because "it's not like I've missed anything."
I'm good at my job. But I don't like it much, most of the time, and I find that I let the minor annoyances poison too much of my life (that I am spending Saturday evening thinking about Monday's batch of student e-mail is a sign that I am not maintaining healthy boundaries). Unfortunately, the job is also something of a trap: although the pay stinks, it is better than most other part-time work. And because I teach on-line, I work from home at my own convenience. It is very convenient not to have to pay for childcare or own a professional wardrobe. Finding other work that pays as well, that I can do from home, has felt impossible. But it can't be impossible. An alternative must exist. And, with the help of my beloved and my friends, I will find it.
Posted by Su Penn at January 31, 2004 09:23 PM | TrackBack