Campus confidential, p.4
Campus Confidential, page 4
Then it had been less fun, but still interesting, to contemplate what it would be like to get that lectureship at St. Andrews in Scotland, or that fellowship in Hungary, or that instructorship in Israel, or that program development job in Kazakhstan. Then it had been even less fun, but still potentially an adventure, to imagine myself working as a Russian instructor at Fort Bragg or Andrews Air Force Base, clocking in at 8:00am and out at 4:30pm (at least according to the job description) like an hourly employee and riding herd over a bunch of over-confident recruits whose idea of a good time was to mouth off to their female instructors and then be smacked down in vaguely sexual terms. We got them in the Indiana summer program I taught at too, so I was wise to their ways and for enough money, or any money at all, I would have done it with a spring in my step and a smile on my lips.
But none of that had panned out. I had, as my advisor had told me, done exceptionally well, with not one but two first-round interviews for tenure-track jobs, although both at state schools in the Midwest, but there had been no invitations for that all-important second round, the campus interview, let alone an actual offer. As the spring semester had wound down and I still had no employment lined up for the fall, not even a visiting instructor position, my committee had started getting shorter and shorter with me, even as they became less and less patient with my requests for more letters of recommendation.
“We thought it would be you, Innochka,” my advisor had confided in me, when I had confessed in April that the phone interview for the two-year VAP in an especially snowy part of Minnesota had come to nothing, and, according to The Wiki, the job had gone to the inside candidate, who had been there for five years but every two years was forced to reapply and complete the interview process all over again. “We thought that of all our grad students, you would get a job. Our hopes were on you. And now you’ve failed us!”
“Ummm...I tried?” My advisor was known far and wide for her blunt-speaking Russian ways, but that was harsh even for her, especially given the fragile state I was in, not only jobless but neck-deep in formatting the deposit copy of my dissertation.
“Isn’t there something else you can try?” she’d said.
“Teaching English? That way I could go back to Moscow...”
“No! That’s the kiss of death. Only undergrads and losers teach English. You will not teach English! You will teach Russian! Only Russian! You’re the only American here qualified to do so. You must teach Russian or you will be failing not only yourself, but our program!”
“Uh...thanks?”
“Although I noticed you used the accusative case after a negated verb when, although what you said is technically correct and some people might have spoken that way, in this particular case a native speaker would more likely have used the genitive...” And she’d gotten distracted from my failures as a job candidate by her dissection of my failures as a Russian speaker, but neither of us had forgotten that statement that I was a failure, not only of myself, but of the program. I was supposed to be the one that returned a little of the fading glory to our once-illustrious program by proving that PhDs from state schools could get jobs, good jobs, and not just go straight from grad school to SNAP benefits and part-time positions bagging groceries.
And then, in August, at the absolute, impossibly absolute, last-minute, I had gotten this crappy, crappy job, a one-semester fill-in position with no benefits and no possibility of renewal—but it was labeled a VAP, and it was in the Mid-Atlantic. My advisor had practically cried with joy when I had told her about it, and ordered me to take it, no matter what.
“No matter how bad it is, don’t complain,” she’d told me. “No matter what they ask you to do, always say ‘Yes, I’d be happy to,’ just like we told you—well, you know. Never say ‘No’ to them, no matter what, never let them know you don’t know what to do. Tell them you do and you’ll be happy to do it, whatever it is, and then figure it out afterwards. And be sure to let them know you’re single and childless. They love single, childless women. We’re the best workers. I’m so glad you didn’t get knocked up like the other girls. I hope you’re ready to work, Innochka, because it will be so much more work than you’ve ever done before, but it’s in the Mid-Atlantic, Innochka! Only fifty kilometers from New York! This is it, Innochka, this is your big chance!”
I shut down The Wiki before I could get any more depressed, and, after contemplating my good fortune and my big chance as I tried to put away some of my dishes only to discover a dead cockroach in the cupboard, gave up for the night and went to bed.
7
The next morning I got up, and after as usual inviting Fevronia to join me, and as usual getting a refusal—Fevronia believed that cardio was best accomplished by periodically leaping out from behind the toilet at inopportune moments and scaring the bejeezus out of her humans—I set off for a dawn jog. A dawn jog that turned into a short but high-intensity dawn run when I stumbled into a neighborhood that appeared to be primarily inhabited by rotting sofas and used condoms.
Back from my exploration of the charms of Greater New Brunswick, I did a few hapkido forms as best I could on the sticky square of kitchen linoleum that had seen better days, followed by some asanas for flexibility and—ahahahaha—relaxation, followed by a shower in my apartment’s icky cheap plastic shower, which I still hadn’t gotten around to cleaning. I had lived in many sketchy, nasty places, but the thought of the $1,300/month I was paying for this one made the nastiness much less easy to bear.
It was now 8:00am on Tuesday, or 26 hours until my first class was set to start, and I still couldn’t access my Cubmail or get into The Den, where fabulous prizes, such as my class rosters and the electronic grade books I was required to keep, were said to reside. I sent off an email to Linda asking her if I could get a print-out of my class rosters, and she sent back an almost immediate snippy response telling me she wasn’t allowed to access that kind of information, but that I should go to the help desk at The Bear Cave and maybe they would be able to help me.
There was no point in going to The Bear Cave until at least 9, so I spent a few productive minutes unpacking my dishes and loading them into the doll-sized dishwasher, only snapping off two of the few remaining tines in the bottom rack in the process. I wondered if I should report that. Probably it would result in me losing my deposit and not getting a new dishwasher. I was wise to the ways of slum landlords, I just was having a hard time accepting that $1,300/month hadn’t moved me out of slum landlord territory...I had to stop obsessing over this $1,300/month. After all, it could be worse. The other place I’d looked at had had a dead rat lying there in plain view of the front office, and had been $1,500/month. I should just accept the $1,300/month I was throwing into this pit and get on with my life.
Next week the monthly job list that came out of Ohio would be posted, and I could scan it for more jobs I wasn’t qualified for, or would never get the requisite security clearance for. Maybe I really should have listened to John seventeen years ago and enlisted along with him...no! Black sites aside, I’d heard too many stories about what happened to girls in the Corps to think that a big brother would protect me, and I’d never felt like having to fit into the labels of bitch, dyke, or ho, anyway. And in a couple of years he was going to hit his twenty-year service mark, and then maybe he’d be chewed up and spit out of the institution he’d signed up for just like me.
I grinned at the thought of the outraged denials that comparison would garner, from academics and Marines alike, and, loading myself down with my laptop, my course files, and every form of ID I could think of, set off to beard the Bear in its Cave.
After only one mildly exciting stall-out, my trusty Honda was parked behind the football stadium, and I was hoofing it across campus to Parson Library, home of a small collection of books and a large collection of aging computers, along with the only Starbucks in a two-township area. I’d realized I was truly slumming it when I’d pulled into town and discovered the lack of Starbucks around me. And it wasn’t because its place was being taken by little locally-owned coffee shops that sold fair-trade coffee and homemade scones, either. There was really no market for coffee shops with wifi here. There was Dunkin’ Donuts, or nothing. Hopefully my apartment wifi wouldn’t go out on me. Haha. How I was going to generate motivation to put in those extra-awful applications I didn’t know. Drive into Pennsylvania and search for a Starbucks there, maybe.
But Parson Library had enough of a foot in the world of intellectual exploration to have an overpriced chain coffee shop, although with a limited selection and particularly sad-looking scones. This helped me keep my resolution not to buy any pastries as I sidled past them and across the lobby into The Bear Cave, where a pale skinny girl with lank dark hair sitting at the front desk gave me an unhelpful look and then pretended to ignore me until I was standing directly in front of her.
“I’m having trouble accessing my Cubmail,” I said.
“What’s your CubID?” she asked, still not looking at me.
“I don’t have it yet.”
“Students were supposed to get their CubID during orientation.”
“I’m not a student. I’m faculty.”
That rocked her back.
“Whaddya teach?” she asked, becoming marginally more animated.
“Russian.”
“You’re Professor Cahill’s replacement!” she said, now sitting up straight. “I’m gonna be in your 201 class. I’m Madison.”
“Nice to meet you, Madison. I’m...” Oh God, oh God, I was a professor now, and a fully-fledged PhD! I had to introduce myself properly. “Dr. Halley,” I said, hoping I sounded confident but not too confident as I said it.
“Why don’t you have your CubID yet, Dr. Halley?”
“They haven’t given it to me yet. I was only hired a couple of weeks ago.”
“But without your CubID you can’t get into your Cubmail or get into The Den!”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what I’m here for. To see if I can at least access my course rosters.”
Madison sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her ratty hoody, and then grinned. “Technically you’re not supposed to be able to get into any of that stuff without your CubID, and technically I’m not supposed to give it to you. But since you’re my new Russian prof, and you look cool, we’ll see what we can do. How old are you, by the way? You don’t look old enough to be a prof.”
“Thirty-four.”
“Whoa! You look way younger than thirty-four. I honestly really did think you were a student when you came in. Not a freshman, maybe, but one of those older students. Certainly not a prof. I guess you’re like Professor Miller—you know Professor Miller? The Arabic professor? He’s, like, ten years older than he looks too.”
“A lifetime of virtue and clean living is its own reward sometimes.”
“You gonna be like this all semester? Saying silly shit like that all the time?”
“Probably.”
Madison sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve again. “Well, it’ll be good for a laugh. Brandy...” Her face shut down.
“I heard about Brandy,” I said. “That must have been very difficult. Did he have a lot of friends in the Russian program?”
“Yeah. He’s the reason I got into it. I was gonna do Spanish like all the other dumbo losers, go for that easy A, since my GPA’s not exactly something to write home about, not that I have to write home, since my dad...but Brandy—his name was really Brandon, FYI, but he went through this whole coming-out thing and started making everyone call him Brandy—anyway, Brandy talked me into trying Russian. It’s super-hard, but the Cahill was fun, he was chill, you know? A real weirdo, but that’s okay. Profs are supposed to be weirdos. Are you a weirdo?”
“Um...that would depend on your definition of weirdo, I guess.”
Madison grinned. “Are you a strict grader?” she asked. “‘Cause that’s the important question, you know? You know Rate My Professor? You on it?”
“I haven’t checked,” I said. “And I think I’m reasonably strict but fair when it comes to grading.”
“You should check out your Rate My Professor entry! I bet you got lots of peppers! You know? For hotness?”
“I know,” I said. “I haven’t checked. So do you think I could look at my course rosters? Maybe get a printout of them?”
“Just a sec. Jason! Jason!”
A twenty-something man came shambling up to the desk from the back office. He was plump and scruffy and vaguely bear-like. I wondered if they hired people based on their resemblance to the college mascot. I reminded myself that making jokes with Madison about the suitability of his appearance to his work location would be inappropriate, now that I was a professor.
“What is it, Maddie?” he asked, looking at a spot on the floor halfway between the two of us. I was willing to bet next month’s $1,300 rent payment that he lived in a basement somewhere and spent all his free time playing World of Warcraft. I shouldn’t be so judgmental about people and their peculiar obsessions, especially since his had led to employment that was more gainful than my own.
“This is Professor Halley,” Madison said proudly, like she was responsible for me herself. “Our new Russian prof. Only she can’t get into her Cubmail or The Den and see her course rosters.”
“Do you have your CubID?” Jason asked, mumbling and still staring at the spot on the floor.
“Don’t be silly, Jay-Jay, they haven’t given it to her yet, that’s why she’s here! You know what asshole retards they are over in admin. Oops—I’m not supposed to say that, am I? The R word, that is. Or the A word. Sorry, Professor H. We had a whole training thing about insensitive speech.”
“I’ve heard worse,” I said. “But class starts in”—I checked my phone—“24 and a half hours, and I still don’t have my course rosters, and I can’t see if any students have emailed me.”
“Jay-Jay’ll check your course rosters, won’t you, Jay-Jay? And I can check your email for you, if you don’t mind me going in there. You don’t have any porn in there, do you?”
“If I do, it didn’t come from me,” I said. “I’ve never been able to access it; that’s why I’m here.”
“Right. What’s your first name?”
“Rowena.”
“Whoa! Like in Harry Potter?”
“Yes, it’s the same name, but I was born years and years before the first Harry Potter book came out—I know, crazy, right?—so it’s like in Ivanhoe.”
“What’s that?”
“Um...a book by Sir Walter Scott?”
“Who’s that?”
“A famous author,” I said. “Like JK Rowling, but in the 19th century. Ivanhoe was made into a movie with Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Did she play Rowena?”
“No, she played Rebecca.”
“Huh. I think I saw a picture of Elizabeth Taylor once. You look kinda like her. And kinda like Rowena Ravenclaw, right? Do you look like the Rowena character in that movie as well? Did she look like us? Pale skin and dark hair? Only you’ve got sort of blue-ish eyes, don’t you, and mine are brown, damn it.”
“No,” I said. “The Rowena in the Ivanhoe movie was blonde.”
“Whoa, that’s still cool, though. To be able to see a movie with someone with your name in it. Not a lot of Madisons in movies.”
“Probably there will be in a few years,” I said encouragingly.
“Yeah, maybe,” said Madison, and, wiping her nose on her sleeve again, sat down at the elderly computer at the desk and clicked around for a bit until she declared, “Okay, I’m in. Here’s your email. Wanna look?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks. How’d you do that?”
“It was easy. For faculty and staff Cubmail is the first four letters of their last name plus the first two letters of their first name and then @tlasc.edu. So yours is hallro@tlasc.edu. And I got admin privileges in some of the systems, so I was able to look up your CubID. I’m writing it down right here. So I went in and changed your password for you—Jason showed me how to do that—and I was in. Your password’s now Russian1, but you can change it if you want. Here’s your BearCave employee page with all your info on it. It says you haven’t done your F-E-R-P-A training yet. What’s F-E-R-P-A?”
“FERPA,” I said. “It’s the law that says I can’t show your grades to anyone without your permission.”
“Really? There’s a law about that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What, not even my dad?”
“Not even your dad. You’re an adult now and those are your grades. You have control over who sees them.”
“Uh-huh,” said Madison, with well-deserved skepticism about her supposed empowerment. “My dad could see ‘em if he wanted to.”
“He can ask you about them, of course, but you’re not obliged to show them to him if you don’t want to, and I can’t show them to him without your written consent.”
“Haha! I can’t wait to tell him that. Not that he’ll give a shit. You wanna see your mail?”
“Is there anything interesting?” I asked, peering around the desk to read the screen.
“Doesn’t look like it. Just a bunch of shit about faculty orientation—did you go to that?”
“No,” I said. “It was only for incoming permanent faculty.”
“Oh. And some stuff about convocation—you going to that?”
“Also only for permanent faculty.”
“Oh. Whatevs. So what do you get to go to?”
“Class,” I said. “Not that orientation and convocation are that exciting anyway, I’m sure.”
“Right. I wouldn’t go to them. Oh hey, Jay-Jay’s here with your course rosters! I gave her her CubID,” Madison told Jason.
“We’re not supposed to give them out to faculty without a CubID card,” said Jason, looking down at the floor as he handed me the printout of my course rosters.
