College Life

 

I have spent a lot of time around colleges over the years.  I was a college student for 10 years, earning three degrees in art at three different schools in that time, including my terminal degree in the art field.  Then for about 15 years I had no official attachment to any school, but I was around them a lot.  This came in the form of doing guest lectures, showing my art and skills to college students, mostly printmakers.  I have also exhibited my art at a lot of colleges, mostly group shows, but even some of them had me showing large bodies of work.  But there were solo shows as well.  And these things occurred all over the state, and all over the country.  Then I got a part time teaching job, first at a state university, then a year later at a county college, lasting 15 and 10 years respectively.  At both I was considered part time, teaching 1 to 3 classes per semester, with no guarantees beyond each semester, other than the constant need for people to teach classes who knew what they were doing.  But that's how the colleges wanted it, and eventually they ended my jobs there.  Not because I was incapable, but I tend to think because they just didn't want to pay me any more.  The last school I was working at cut me loose about a year and a half ago. 

All schools were having problems at that point, beside the usual issues colleges have, there was the threat of Covid, and the rules that it required, which made it very hard to teach any kind of class that called for students to be present and use college provided equipment.  Which means any kind of art class you might think of.  Colleges had been pushing toward more online classes anyway, while shrinking departments, but the pandemic really accelerated that process.  The university I had worked for decided to adopt a learning management system, which means a corporate based system that makes use of computers, and just purchases all classes as commodity from these corporate entities.   None of these ever work, by the way, so they are constantly replaced.  But the administrators believe it will give them control, as well as eliminate all those faculty they hate to have around. I was scheduled to teach two classes in the fall, 2020 semester, but when the new learning management system decided I wasn't suitable, I was let go immediately. My brain surgery happened later that semester, so I couldn't have finished that semester anyway, but it wasn't diagnosed yet, so they didn't know that yet.

However, the email box for that university still works, and my password still works, so I have seen all the mail sent to all faculty and students in that time.  I check it almost every day.  When they took the classes away, they took my students away, so I don't hear from them anymore.  But I get everything else, which is a few dozen mails per week.  When I updated my exhibition list last week, I forwarded a copy to that box.  Why not?  It's organized, (I moved that to my Documents section) and there is an unlimited amount of space. 

Then last week I got three pieces of mail that show things may change, all were from the college's new president, who sends out lots of mails, or from official offices.  One stated that they have decided to replace the chosen learning management system with a new one.  It seems the one they chose and were told by everyone was a bad system, was the disaster that everyone said it would be, and now they think they have a better one.  (we had this new one at my county college, and I know it has problems as well) Since I was let go for not being able to handle the flawed system they had chosen before, I don't know what this means for me, but they know how to find me if they want me.  Another bit of news was that they have now had two consecutive weeks without any new cases of Covid 19 among any of the residential students on campus,  which means they will lift the mask mandate in mid-April.  (masks are still allowed after that for anyone who wants one, and it will probably be many) Of course, this implies that they did have positive cases among students before then, which is why they closed the college down in March of 2020 to begin with, so almost two years of pandemic on campus.   Those last classes I would have had were to be hybrid classes, a mix of online and in person teaching, very short classes so that we could have only half the students at a time and spread them out in our old and small classrooms.  So maybe it was for the best that my employment was ended, as I might have been exposed if I was there.  The third news was that besides a new learning management system, they are about to adopt a new login system, for our convenience of course, which is what places always say.  I don't know what is involved in creating this new system, or what I would have to do to get a new login, but it's possible that no longer being employed there, I would no longer have access to that email account, and wouldn't have access to all those saved emails.  So I guess it's time to take all the things I have saved on email there and move it to another place they don't control.  It turns out that I started a new account a few weeks ago, no relation to the college, so I have a place to send things that may be worth saving (tested it today and it works), so my new task for this week is to take anything worth saving and move it.  A lot of this will be teaching stuff, in case I ever need it again.  

So I am no longer employed by a college, and may never be again, but being a college professor never really ends.