"I'm never teaching again." - Me, after each of the three semesters I've taught
Since getting my MA in 2012, I've taught a few courses at the community college, as an adjunct - the only sort of professorship anyone can realistically aspire toward these days. (There are thousands of highly qualified academic job-seekers fighting over a few dozen full-time, tenure-track positions at any time. But virtually anyone with an MA can be an adjunct.) Adjuncts teach on a temporary, semester-by-semester basis, generally without benefits and without livable pay. Having taught a total of three courses, I haven't even been paid $6,000 - this has not enabled me to move out of Mom and Dad's, let alone begin to repay student loans.
Largely, I suppose, on account of my AS, I find it anxiety-provoking to interact with students (or anyone), and I'm not very good at it; the most I can say is that I choose my words very conscientiously, and I don't antagonize anyone. (Really, I tend to be spineless, and students take advantage of me. I've also gotten complaints that I speak with too advanced a vocabulary.)
Teaching, however, is occasionally rewarding; I'm able to take pride in doing something that involves my talents, interests, and acquired skills. I don't believe I could say this about any other job. All the jobs I can realistically imagine seem, at best, barely tolerable - and usually quite intolerable. Previous, non-teaching work (filing and data entry) has led me to contemplate suicide and seek extensive treatment for depression.
Every course I've taught has started badly. Good class-meetings end with my being exhausted from my performance, exhausted from the anxiety - but not so exhausted that I don't spend the next few hours reliving the experience and viciously scolding myself for my mistakes, or reflecting on my general lack of fitness for human society. Bad class-meetings leave me hopeless and suicidal. I've contemplated suicide at least once as a result of every course I've taught.
(To be fair: One of the three courses left me suicidal because of a mutual attraction between a student and myself; the student made it obvious to me that there was interest, but she redacted her promise to "wait for" me after the course came to an end, and I never heard from her afterwards, despite my reaching out a few times.)
So, with that background out of the way...
I'm not teaching this semester. I'm applying for disability. (Actually reapplying; I was turned down in 2009 or so.)
It pains me to doubt that my application (appeal, etc.) will be accepted. ("Of course he can work!" they'll say; "he has a graduate degree and demonstrated success in a classroom!" Never mind the impossibility of making a decent living in higher education; never mind everything else.)
It pains me to doubt that I'll ever find work I can tolerate. (Simply to find work is hard enough.)
It pains me to think that, to the end of earning a livable income, the best I can hope for is to teach a single course at a time while receiving disability benefits. (Taken together, that's perhaps in the neighborhood of $17,000 annually...?)
It pains me to think that I'll always be an impossible sell in the dating market, even if I finally get a place of my own. I'm reasonably attractive, but I have AS, no money, no desire for children, etc.
Finally, although I do have goals in the way of self-improvement, continued informal study, etc. - things that have little if anything to do with money and relationships - it pains me to think that my situation now represents the best that life has to offer me.
"There is no doubt," some philosopher said, "that life is given to us, not be enjoyed, but to be gotten over."
27 Aug 2014, 4:06 pm
