The Perils of the Academy - pt. 1

The last few days of the semester were rough. I had two stacks of math homework (I didn't grade the first half at midterm), 95 papers grad and undergrad, and finals from two classes to grade. Oh, and two theses. I took my time because grades weren't due until January 4th.

Unfortunately that was also the first day of intersession. I have taken to calling it wintersession because I think that calling it 'intersession' is misleading if not outright false advertising for students who only briefly glance at the schedule then immediately sign up, only to be disappointed later. Wintersession is good for my pocketbook, but not my psyche. Imagine 16 weeks of class material crammed into 3 hour classes 4 nights a week for 3 weeks. The students get to take another course in a very short amount of time, and I get an additional 10% of my salary. I found that most students take the class knowing that they won't have to remember much and they can tolerate almost any subject if it is only 3 weeks long. I teach one of the more boring and dreaded classes, so I ended up with a full room on January 4th. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I make it out to be, but I am not my wife who had to put the kids to bed each night while I was gone. I also signed up to teach a graduate class this summer for environmental studies, "Environmental Law." It is a class that they all need, and I want to prep it, so it may work out just fine. I also was awarded a fellowship to work on the newly formed Center for Sustainability at school. It is in no way free money. I have to help coordinate outreach activities and move all of our students into an online portfolio system.

Each of these classes or fellowships ends up adding another 10% to my salary. Even with the furlough (I'm currently making 90% of my salary), this year I hope to make right up to the salary cap of 125% of my salary! While this sounds like I'm rolling in cash, you must remember that this amount, 125% of my salary, is approximately the same amount of money that a 5 year veteran of the LAPD makes with a language bonus. It is much less than an entry level consultant in D.C., but significantly more than a k-12 teacher in Utah (#47 of 50 states for average educator salary). Oh, and I live in Southern California, which is renown for its low cost of living.

Normally, I don't think that I would sign up for these winter or summer school classes. Those times are reserved for thinking, writing, working on tenure, and spending time with my family. The main problem is that my salary isn't enough to support a family of 5 without help, and the furlough hasn't made that any easier. I have become a hustler - constantly looking for some new scheme to make a couple more bucks. I don't have any fancy clothes, or look like Snoop Dogg, but I feel like a slimy character nonetheless. This academic hustling is what I call prostituting your brain.
You see the sad part of the entire story is that Academics don't have much else going for them besides their brain. I for instance have lobbied every semester to have someone place a chili beside my name on ratemyprofessor.com. Each semester, the students shoot me this look that says "I pity you for asking, but I still can't sink that low." We are all geeks with poor physiques, stupid jokes, overly analytical worldviews, and no self-censoring mechanism - the perfect blind date nightmare. We can't sell anything else of worth except our brains. I imagine that prostitutes think the same thing as most academics - "I'll stop doing it when I can just save enough to stop." The honest truth is that we are addicted to the little bit more money that we can bring in as we get better at performing our tricks. We work hard to make ourselves look better for our clients, hoping that the next step will bring a little more of a payoff. Yet we have to admit in the end, we have traded ourselves for something of less worth. Maybe I'll stop selling my brain for 10% of my salary per trick. Probably not.