During the past few days, I’ve been called and emailed by adjuncts needing advice. During those conversations, I realized I’ve learned a few more tricks to being happy, efficient, and effective as an adjunct instructor. It’s only been a year since Happy Professor was published, but here are some of the new tips that weren’t…
I love this job, and it makes me happy beyond words to get this confirmed on an almost daily basis. Here are some of those moments from last week: I saw a chick flick with a girlfriend at the movie theater. I’m not one to cry about love stories, but there were a few meaningful…
This happens. I’ve learned this lesson before (I even wrote about it in my book), and I had to learn it again a few weeks ago. Here’s the situation: I now split my time between working at home teaching online classes, and teaching on campus in the morning three days a week. I wasn’t getting…
I wrote a book over the summer about how to enjoy life as a part-time college instructor, despite low pay, by being efficient and adopting a very simple lifestyle. Those crucial elements still help me to be successful, happy, and free on a day to day basis. However, I didn’t realize that shortly after publishing…
Over winter break, I finished reading Michelle Post’s book, Building Your Adjunct Platform. It was insightful, helpful, positive, and filled with extremely valuable links and resources (if you’re a struggling or aspiring part-time professor, you need to get this book). Many of her tips included things that I felt I’d taken care of, like establishing…
Today marks the official start of the second week of college classes (at least at most Central Florida colleges), and with the uncertainty of a new workload and new students, comes the excitement to be in the classroom again. I’m loving my new students at UCF, but I’m also getting used to teaching in the…
I don’t mean hungry as in ‘I could really eat something right now’ (although earlier I did the whole, “I’ll just have this one scoop of peanut butter,” and then half a jar later.. you know). I mean hungry as in ‘I want to master my profession.’ I’m aware that this doesn’t happen overnight, more…
This is the title of Peggy Liggit’s TEDxEMU talk about connecting with students and making a difference. Like every other thing I feel compelled to write about, I loved it. As the director of faculty development at Eastern Michigan University- and the daughter of a professor so dedicated to teaching that he instilled the same…
Do your students know what their life goals are? At least once during the semester- normally during the beginning or middle of the term- I have my students do some sort of activity to evaluate why they’re really here in college, or more generally, what they want out of life. This semester I created an…
For some reason I can’t shake this question: What will they remember 10 years from now? I met a fellow adjunct instructor at the beginning of this term, and we’ve met up in the campus adjunct office quite a bit. This seasoned instructor mentioned to me that, realistically, most students won’t remember what they learned…