Post by Elizabeth Spencer
This fall I will return to the classroom after a year’s break. During this year, students continued to contact me, no doubt assuming that I continued to hold positions in the two universities I worked at. They asked what I was teaching in the spring, or for me to write them recommendation letters to different graduate schools or even serve as a reference for a potential employer.
“Please forgive my delay in responding,” I’d write them, “I’m on maternity leave this semester. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” And then I did. In between feedings and diaper changes, in a haze of sleep deprivation, I wrote recommendations for employers, study abroad programs, and graduate schools.
Of course, you know—or maybe you don’t; my students did not, and they are in many ways very familiar with the ins and outs of higher education, though not of employment prospects in many cases (either theirs or mine)—there are no sabbaticals and no paid or unpaid official absences for adjuncts.
In the final weeks of my pregnancy I didn’t know how long I would be away from my job. It’s not dissimilar to the position all adjuncts are in at the end of every semester as they wait for an email inviting them back. Read the rest of this entry »