{"id":3572,"date":"2012-02-09T20:04:35","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T03:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3572"},"modified":"2012-02-09T21:42:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T04:42:00","slug":"adjunct-teaching-and-the-portfolio-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3572","title":{"rendered":"Adjunct Teaching and the “Portfolio Life”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of a seasonal celebration of Imbolc \u2014 it’s about creativity, right? \u2014 I took a day and cleaned my big home office desk. Took everything off the top, stained the scratches with Old English Scratch Cover<\/a>, and then polished the mahogany-veneer top with paste wax for protection against spilt coffee, tea, and whiskey. After sort and organizing all the papers, etc., I felt ready to begin a new season.<\/em><\/p>\n

Part of that cleaning is cleaning out drafts of blog posts, such as this one<\/em>:<\/p>\n

At Academy Mercenary<\/em>,<\/strong> Amy Hale holds up adjunct teaching against the concept of “the portfolio life” and thinks that they are compatible<\/a>. (Plus more about the recent AAR annual meeting.)<\/p>\n

In the past week or so I have been particularly inspired by the notion of the \u201cportfolio life\u201d, which is the idea that we start to see ourselves less as \u201chaving jobs\u201d and more as possessing a variety of skills and interests that we can add to our portfolio. We can use our portfolio for marketing ourselves and also for making decisions on how we want to spend our time and resources. \u00a0Portfolio lives also require knowing what resources you need, because the income streams are seen less as an\u00a0identity\u00a0anchor and more of a way to finance how you want to live. \u00a0Although the portfolio life is frequently used to promote active retirement, I think there are plenty of ways for those of us not working 9 to 5 jobs to use this idea to use this concept to consider a more integrated life that is less defined by our jobs, and more defined by what we love. For people not engaged in standard employment, or do not have a single institution based position, this can be a very empowering life reframing exercise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest.<\/a><\/p>\n

I graduated with what amounted to a BFA in Creative Writing, although Reed College<\/a> called it a BA in English. I certainly knew that that degree offered no clear career path\u2014having the concept of the “portfolio life” might have been helpful when I was in my twenties.<\/p>\n

As it happened, I did pretty much what “the voices” told me to do, and it has worked out OK, so far.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at Inside Higher Education<\/em>, two essays imagine a new model, where\u00a0 both full-time professors and overworked adjunct professors leave the university to form guilds of academic ronin<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of a seasonal celebration of Imbolc \u2014 it’s about creativity, right? \u2014 I took a day and cleaned my big home office desk. Took everything off the top, stained the scratches with Old English Scratch Cover, and then polished the mahogany-veneer top with paste wax for protection against spilt coffee, tea, and whiskey. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[137],"class_list":["post-3572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-VC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2561,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2561","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":0},"title":"Life as an Adjunct Professor","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Yet another article on the turn toward academic part-timers. My wife spent twenty years as an adjunct, which on one level was OK with her, because the community college at which she mostly taught dumped hellish loads on their full-time instructors. On the other hand, the pay was minimal: $600-900\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5249,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5249","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":1},"title":"Popularity Contests and Declining Universities","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 24, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Janice Fiamengo takes on Rate My Professors as a sign of what is wrong with American universities. Such accusations reveal little about the professor in question; no one ever satisfactorily distinguishes a boring professor from a boredom-inclined student \u2014 which is not to suggest that boring professors do not exist,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2477,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2477","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":2},"title":"First, Learn to Talk like a Professor …","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"If you liked this, you will like Office Hours, \"a humor website about academia through the eyes of an adjunct.\" Bonus:\u00a0 actual human actors. Here is Season Two, Episode One, but maybe you will want to start at the beginning. \u00a0","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5398,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5398","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":3},"title":"Some Items of Interest","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Some Pagan, occult, and academic news items of interest: \u2022 I did not know that any of the \"Group of Seven\" were Theosophists \u2014 plus other influential Canadian Pagans and occultists in one list. \u2022 \"Unintended Consequences of the Affordable Health Care Act\" for part-time college and university faculty. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":934,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=934","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":4},"title":"The Wind that Shakes the Pine Trees","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a sunny day with a brisk wind blowing. Pine needles are in the air. M. and I both slept in a little last night after returning at midnight from one of the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival concerts.We went to one last year too, to hear Kim Robertson's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Celts\"","block_context":{"text":"Celts","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=celts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10319,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10319","url_meta":{"origin":3572,"position":5},"title":"Texas Witchcraft Murder Archive Finds a Home","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 3, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I have diversity right here in the trunk of my rental car, officer. The first problem on any university campus finding a parking spot. I pulled in behind the Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, which is part of West Texas A &M University, and all the faculty spaces were full. There\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/diversity-sign.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3808,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}