Faculty at a local college - oh, happy Day! Teaching Freshman Comp - fabulous, energizing & quite the coup!
The year was 2001, and my teaching gig as Adjunct Faculty had just begun! Sigh! Lovely!
Slowly, I sought out & was assigned more classes at other local colleges. Slowly, I concluded my Court-appointed criminal cases and did not seek new clients!
Transitioning from the very lucrative career of law & criminal defense was a process - one that I welcomed, after years of litigation & clients on the precipice of their lives with freedom at stake -
I welcomed being in an academic setting; with colleagues and students and my writing and my books! That was the beginning and my idealism and innocence precluded any acknowledgement of the realities.
Reality! Get another terminal degree and your appointment as a full-time lecturer is assured! Well, no - that was a fantasy! Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why did ‘they’ let me spend five semesters, countless hours reading, annotating and writing? Yes, and writing my name on student loans every term; signing up for debt - with a happy heart that the full-time ‘gig’ is just around the bend.
It’s still somewhere around the bend - that job, that secure, benefitted lovely job.
HA! I’ve taught at so many colleges and had diverse, and yes, crazy schedules - teaching days and nights - even Friday nights in the ‘hood’ to piece together a life - a job rather, that supports my life.
The consistent good news is the students and being a part of their new-found passion for or renewed passion in learning, discussions - discourse on issues & truisms that matter. No matter their competency - I love being in the class - facilitating, nudging and listening. I’m younger for it, after all these years.
Being an adjunct faculty means random assignments of classes and numerous colleges, with Administrators that don’t seem to look at that ‘required availability form’. How they figure what and where your classes will be is mind-boggling and nonsensical.
So, how to put it all together? Perhaps, the trick is just - saying ‘Yes’. ‘Yes’ to everything offered. Hope for the best! Nerves of steel and whispered prayer.
Beyond that, the pay is not a liveable wage and to diminish the very little value given to adjunct faculty - the payroll schedule and tendency to hold funds until way into the semester translates to no funds for rent, electricity - yes, ‘turn off’ of gas and electric is not uncommon with adjuncts - and the norm of ‘no funds’ and lack of timeliness.
How to align these problems to a solution? Teach more, tutor more, take any job to pay bills and keep on moving; the keep on moving mantra is mine. There are many, yes a multitude my club. My peeps are phenomenal, humorous, smart - and very poor. This particular common denominator is shameful-shameful to the US, the society we’ve become; and that shame shifts to us, despite our smiles and pushing forward.
It is shameful to be poor in America. It is shameful to have multiple graduate degrees, be smart and engaging and teaching and poor. 
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