Carolyne Wright on being a “Permanent Temporary”

Several years ago, I was asked by Sally Shivnan, a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland – Baltimore, to provide a few comments for an article she was writing for the AWP Job List, about some of the early-career challenges of writers who teach for a living.

The article, “Surviving the Trip from Adjunct to Professor: How to Keep Writing through an Overload of Teaching,” offered some practical solutions to the problems of balancing time to write with the demands of the early stages of a teaching career.

The comments of mine ultimately used for this article dealt with the value of establishing a writing routine (I was quoted as preferring “the wee hours ‘when banks and offices are closed and the phone doesn’t ring'”) and of staying organized in my writing life—keeping detailed lists to track queries, deadlines, and follow-up calls and e-mails.

But these nuggets of practical wisdom were only a small fraction of the reflections that Shivnan’s questions generated.  In response to her query, I found myself writing a narrative about my odyssey as an “academic migrant” and “permanent temporary” job holder.  What follows is an updated version of the narrative I wrote—my version of a career trajectory that for a time seemed stuck in the early stages of short-term, contingent jobs, but which has become the long-term status now for many writers who teach.

Over the last two decades, in nearly a dozen states, I held a series of limited-term (one-semester, one-year, or two-year) teaching positions–most of them full-time with benefits, several of them visiting writer posts with some degree of prestige because of the extensive publications required to qualify. But for different reasons (mainly budgetary), none of these short-term jobs led to an ongoing position. Consequently, while indicating my keen interest in remaining at each institution if possible, but not holding my breath that I could stay, I would embark on the next round of applications for positions for the following year.  Hardly would I arrive at the next new university or college, and (while getting set up in the new department, town, and community; meeting a new group of colleagues; working out routines for teaching, writing, shopping, social life, and all the rest), I would almost immediately begin applying for the following year’s job. Since the academic job search cycle begins as early as August, for jobs that will start the following August, I was constantly applying.

Although these visiting posts usually carried no advising or committee responsibilities, I would often volunteer for such duties anyway, to demonstrate my collegiality and the kind of contribution I would make if kept on in that department. Colleagues were glad for my participation, but not able to alter departmental policies or influence the financial circumstances that prevented the continuation of my appointment. For my own financial and professional survival, I was compelled to spend as much time applying for the next round of jobs as I spent preparing and teaching my current classes, and doing the writing and publishing that would help me land future jobs. These were full-scale academic applications–letter, CV, dossier with reference letters and transcripts, writing samples if requested.  If there was interest in my candidacy, this packet of material was followed by preliminary interviews at the MLA Convention, the AWP Conference, or by telephone, and on-campus interviews when the search reached that stage.

Hence, for over dozen years, I was an academic itinerant, moving from one state to another– Massachusetts to Virginia and Wyoming, Wyoming to Georgia, Georgia to Florida, Florida to Oklahoma, Oklahoma to Ohio, Ohio to Washington State–for the sake of the next short-term position.  I learned to pick up and go where I needed to for the sake of work, and basically live in perpetual transition.  I got to the point where I left most of my stuff in the same packing containers in which it would be shipped to the next destination: books and manuscripts in cartons organized like drawers and shelves, clothes in cardboard wardrobe boxes, as few household items as possible, and no furniture.  I was the “scholar gipsy” of my generation, with displacement as my permanent address.  This way of life quickly became tiresome–the pattern of constant change grew repetitive, the continual moves grew monotonous.  I grew weary of how efficiently I could finesse the whole process–how I could hammer the tent stakes in for six months, then pull up those stakes and transplant elsewhere.

Once I met my husband (in Ohio), I would have been okay with remaining in Cleveland had he wished to continue working there.  But by the time we met, he was tired of the Rust Belt, so after a year, we departed Cleveland for my native Seattle.  Since he has a good position in his field (and a salary which covers health benefits and most expenses for both of us), I am glad to stay here, with a home base in my home town!  With this external stability that mirrors–at last!–the internal stability that has been essential to staying balanced over so many years of employment odyssey, I am content with the jobs I am offered (or create for myself) in this region. When I am offered short-term posts in other states, I accept them, but I no longer seek to remain at any distant institution.  My home base is my native Seattle, and I love the teaching job I have held for the last six years—since mid-2005.  In fact, if this were a tenure-track post, I would no doubt be coming up for tenure consideration just about now!

A few months before the move (back) to Seattle, following a few suggestions and contacts given to me by literary associates, I made a few informal job queries–mainly via email with attached CV, course descriptions, and writing samples.  As a result, I was invited to join the faculty of a new low-residency MFA program, the Whidbey Writers Workshop of the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, on beautiful Whidbey Island.  It’s an ongoing but part-time post, it has a wonderful family of faculty colleagues, students and (after several graduating classes) alumni—and I have been with the team since the first residency of August 2005, the first semester, participating in the development of the program since the beginning.  Talk about continuity and stability!  In many ways, it has been my best job.

I also have been able to propose courses and teach frequently at a local community center for the literary arts, Seattle’s Richard Hugo House, another organization whose evolution I have been part of for the last half-dozen years now. These part-time posts are supplemented by readings and workshops at various colleges and universities, and at writers’ conferences and festivals around the country.

I spend a good deal of time organizing these events, as well as the travel and other logistics involved, and I receive a goodly number of (mostly modest) honorarium checks in return. This sort of short-term travel is a good way to meet students and fellow writers all over the country as well as locally.  It also requires the organizational ability, attention to details and deadlines, and all the other qualities and skills that I had to hone during the years of academic peripatetics—skills that would be an asset to any department that might have hired me for an ongoing position.  I would not be able to subsist on my current level of income if I were living on my own, but fortunately I don’t have to, as long as my husband has a full-time position with benefits.

These days, I apply for a limited number of posts advertised in the MLA and AWP job lists, but this is nothing like the full-scale application process I undertook for over a dozen years in the 1990s and the first few years of the new millennium.  At this point, I seem to have achieved something approaching the best of several worlds:  the flexibility afforded by low-residency, part-time teaching—which permits much more writing time and professional travel to promote that writing than many full-time jobs.  I also enjoy the continuity of an ongoing position that I love, with a family, a wide circle of friends and colleagues in many parts of this country and the world, and a home base in a city and region of the country that feels like my geographic and psychic center.

What have I learned from all this?   I am grateful for the adaptability and flexibility that were necessary to keep my wits and balance over the course of so many moves, and I am glad that I have had a more varied existence than many writers who achieved the tenure track.  But what I have learned is the subject for another day, another set of notes as-yet unwritten.

Carolyne Wright’s latest collection of poetry, Mania Klepto: The Book of Eulene, is forthcoming from Turning Point Books. Read sample poems here. Carolyne’s translations appear in LAR Issues 6 and 10.