Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
I wanted to learn to teach, but found myself buying Chanukah presents for a tenured dinosaur's niece.
Feb 7, 2000 | "Rule No. 1: Don't screw the students," he said, sitting back down from shutting the door. I coughed tea all over my sleeve, swallowed and continued staring at him, nervous, befuddled. He puffed his cheeks, sighed and gazed with half-open eyes toward the ceiling, exhaling:
"Well, I don't give a damn what you do in your personal life, anyway. Just don't screw anyone in this office, OK?"
He stared at me a moment longer and turned toward his desk, both hands feeling his pockets for a pen. "That's all. See you Tuesday." I grabbed my bag and said meekly, "See you later," closing his office door behind me. So this was teaching. This was tenure. This was what I've spent the vast majority of my life striving for. Dear God.
I offered to be a teacher's assistant for a class in American literature to brighten up my doctoral applications, but what began as an obligatory extracurricular exercise soon took over my entire life. Within three months I somehow went from grading papers and taking roll to delivering hot meals and shopping for his niece's Chanukah presents -- and all for a good letter of recommendation. By the end, I did not learn how to teach a class or properly grade a paper, but acquired a far more important skill: how to manipulate the system -- and students -- to gain financial and personal rewards. I saw how to work it; the dirty tricks that can earn you more nap time, more sick days, an all-expenses-paid trip to Italy, a handicapped parking spot, a free personal shopper and more time to do anything and everything except teach.
I first heard of him my second semester in the M.A. program, his name always accompanied with a roll of the eyes, a dour look or a pejorative comment: "He's a fascist." "He's a misogynist." "He's a pervert." "He's insane." "He tries to touch you." "He reeks of apricots." It all piqued my interest enormously. I'd spied him across campus hobbling along like a hobo in a Depression-era cartoon, a "Little Rascal" all grown up, then half deflated. What was this guy about? Why was he teaching? I was hooked and had to know more.
I quickly enrolled in his Mark Twain seminar and was wholly disappointed -- not because he didn't live up to his notorious reputation, but because people hadn't talked enough about him. He was mesmerizing: The mauve, threadbare oxfords hanging out the back of the clownish red polyester sport jackets, tapering down just past the baggy butt of thick olive Farrah trousers; his office, like some bad '70s modern art installation, with its explosion of manila envelopes on the floor, on the desk, covering the computer, sticking out of drawers, cluttering-up chairs; his penchant for reading his entire dissertation over the course of three classes, stopping only to quietly burp in his hand; his effortlessly changing a B to an A on an exam if you simply asked -- all these things made him more fantastic, a living, breathing Falstaff, only more Wilde in nature.
So when I saw him the next semester and he asked me to T.A. his class, squeezing my hand with his clammy palm -- his salt-and-pepper monobrow curving like the forehead of a shar-pei -- how could I say no? I needed something to fill up the "Please List Any Teaching Experience" box for my applications, and could surely pull a good letter of recommendation out of him.
"Yes, I'd love to," I said.
"Thank you, handsome young man" he said, winking, before turning around and hitting his head on the library door.
We met the next Tuesday. He welcomed me in, shut his office door and in a cracked, faux-authoritative voice, tried to muster up the professorial decorum to deliver words of wisdom to the eager-eared, budding new scholar: "Rule No. 2: As long as you don't fuck the students, you will never get fired. They can't do anything." With tea still all over my sleeve from Rule No. 1, I responded shakily, "Really? Um, that's great."
I was to pick up papers once a week, provide a short list of comments for improvement and write the grade in light pencil on the upper right hand corner. As I turned to leave, he said, "Oh, and by the way, on Tuesday, could you please pick my mail up from 212? My back is troubling me. Thank you." "Ahh, sure," I said, just getting a hint of the mess I had gotten myself into.
In the following weeks, tasks piled up like so many used handkerchiefs in his perpetually full backpack: "By the way, could you please keep track of the roll? They don't pay me to be a goddamned secretary." "Listen, could you bring my mail back down to 212? My arm is killing me." "Would you mind terribly putting the grades in a grade book? You will have to buy one. Oh, I trust your judgment, don't be foolish."
It was amazing what he got away with, and how he managed to squeak through the machinery so unscathed. He no longer prepared for classes, graded papers, wrote anything, answered his phone, held office hours or demonstrated any interest whatsoever in students or teaching. And the school couldn't fire him. Apparently, for about five years his teaching evaluations were so bad that the English department went so far as to warn students against taking his classes.
This sloth, this callousness: Were these the fruits of tenure? Sure, I had seen other tenured professors slack off, check out busty freshmen in scandalous fashion while the T.A. ran the show, but at least they seemed interested, at least they published books and tried to appear active in the field. He, on the other hand, did nothing. The university just pickled him, put him in a jar and let him rot in his own juices. Tenure: the last saving grace of the crumbling ivory tower? What the hell was I thinking wanting to be part of this?
"Why don't you retire?" I asked him after a particularly exhaustive rant about the evils of teaching. He was over 60, had been a professor for more than 30 years and should have a good pension coming. His only response was "I need the money," winking, contorting his face like a shrunken witchy-poo apple-head you see at Halloween.
By late November, I was running the entire class, keeping track of roll, correcting every paper, every test, every assignment, taking all the grades. I began to feel guiltily responsible for the class; I knew what those sophomores -- those taking out loans, working through school, trying to better themselves by being the first in the family to graduate from college -- were going through. I was going to be a teacher, after all, and had to get used to such adverse situations -- plus, I needed that letter of recommendation.
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