For anyone who’s read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, the premise is clear. Ms. Ehrenreich (or Barbara, as some of my students like to refer to her in their papers), on a dare from the editor of Harper’s, does an undercover writing assignment in which she gets hired in very low paying jobs and replicates the conditions of being rock bottom poor (albeit with a little cheating).
I remember reading her article on The Maids in Harper’s eight or nine years ago. However, I didn’t take much interest in the issue (or any other economic/job related issue) until I was out of graduate school. I wasn’t interested in such things. I was pursuing a degree that would put me on a path to an intellectually rewarding and creatively satisfying life. Money and job talk were such dirty words. Well, they still are, but they became such pressing issues after I got my master’s.
During my first year of teaching, Ehrenreich’s book caught my interest. I got into part-time teaching, especially with a community college where I studied in my younger years. As much as I liked the school, it wasn’t enough to pay the bills. I soon got some classes at a private design school teaching English Composition, but that only lasted one quarter. Without a car, I was unable to get courses at other schools. The two schools were within walking distance of where I lived (in downtown), and getting to other colleges in the county would take a lot of time. I was also too busy to “work it” to get an in with those schools. The next semester, I only had a class at the community college and none from the private school. I had some financial help from family, but it wasn’t enough. I felt the pinch of being “nickel and dimed” as I tried to use my meager pay and family assistance for to pay for the basic essentials of life.
During the summer, I tried jumping ship to a non-academic job. I landed one, I was financially solvent for a while, but it wouldn’t last too long. Several months later, I found myself unemployed. This time I had a car, so I made the rounds to as many community colleges (including the one I taught at before) where the English Department chairs would interview me, and I secured some classes for the semester. During my time of unemployment, I once again got a bitter taste of being “nickel and dimed.”
Ehrenreich’s book was about the unskilled and those with very little education and how they really had little to survive. One of the realities of these working poor was that they worked several jobs. It would be nice to say that this is strictly isolated phenomenon, but it’s not. The higher education field is one where teachers can have very little and they need to put together a patchwork income in order to survive.
Nickel and Dimed reveals that menial work can be very stressful and mentally taxing. To this, I would simply love to scream, “Duh!” I’ve had a few crappy jobs working in a grocery store while in college, and I can attest to that. Since my return to adjunct teaching, I found that traveling to various school sites, learning and dealing with multiple school policies, and trying to meet student needs with scant resources can be very stressful and mentally taxing. Sometimes I come home from teaching and all I want to do is fall asleep.
Recently, I found Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch to also be very germane. During my unemployment, I worked the colleges, but I also tried to get non-academic jobs as well. I hoped to get jobs as a writer, editor, editorial assistant, entry level technical writer—jobs which reflected my educational background. During the first two years of my graduate school career, I worked as an assistant editor for the university press journal. In addtion, I hoped my teaching experience would translate to something else. I put resumes on Monster dot Com and some other sites, sent my resume to various leads, and even traveled to some job fairs in Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Orange County. Thankfully, I didn’t fall prey to any resume or job coaches. I just didn’t have the money.
I use Nickel and Dimed in my composition classes. As our economy gets more and more fucked, poverty becomes a very relevant topic. For some students, they can relate to what Ehrenreich discusses, while for others, this topic is light years from their comprehension. I’ve hesitated to bring up Bait and Switch in the discussions or even discuss the pitfalls of being an adjunct instructor (would this scare students away from college altogether?). Ehrenreich even mentions once on her blog that there was a part-time instructor who commuted to his classes from a homeless shelter! Now, that’s disturbing.
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