“Lassiter taught nearly 50 courses before he began a tenure-track job in 2013. He ordinarily took on three courses in Fall and Spring semesters, plus three or four courses during the summer… Similarly, before starting a tenure-track job in 2014, Atkins taught over 60 courses. As a graduate student, he would usually cover between two and five courses every year, but after he graduated with a Ph.D. in 2010, his course load increased to four or five courses each semester.”
Richard Atkins, professor of philosophy at Boston College, and Charlie Lassiter, associate professor of philosophy at Gonzaga University, were both graduate students at Fordham University, and during that time they worked extensively as adjuncts “while simultaneously completing their Ph.D. program requirements by writing term papers, passing comprehensive exams, and writing dissertations.”
Nathan Ballantyne (Arizona State), was on the faculty at Fordham when Atkins and Lassiter were there, and decided to include them in his series of interviews at The Workbench.
He writes: “Years after meeting them, I wanted to know: What compelled them to write and how did they work during those precarious years before finding tenure-track employment?”
I recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt in which Atkins and Lassiter answer questions about how they got any writing done while being so busy with teaching and other responsibilities.
Ballantyne: How did you organize your life? Where did you do your work?
Atkins: I worked wherever I could. In our apartment in Queens, I had a desk in the living room. Other times, it was at the kitchen table. My wife has pictures of me sitting in our apartment, holding our daughter, while working on my dissertation. As far as organizing my life, I’ll tell you the same thing that I tell all of the philosophy grad students at BC. One of Charlie’s colleagues, Greta Turnbull LaFore, who went to grad school at BC, coined the name for it—the “Atkins Diet.” Every day, read at least one essay or chapter related to your research, write at least one paragraph, and jog at least one mile.
Ballantyne: How did you stick with that routine over the years? Was it habitual? Was someone encouraging you?
Atkins: I committed myself to doing it and I wouldn’t stop. Some days, laying down for bed, I’d ask: Did I do all my things today? If there was something I missed, I’d jump out of bed at midnight. I had to do it. Otherwise, I would have a guilty conscience.
Ballantyne: Did you have a similar strategy, Charlie?
Lassiter: My strategy wasn’t as regimented as Richard’s. One thing I did was keep some work materials on hand wherever I went. I still do that. I always have pen and paper and a book or journal article. And if I ever had any downtime, standing in line at a grocery store or at 2 in the morning when I’m trying to get my kid back to sleep, I would pull out something to read and try to saturate my time with as much reading and writing as I could.
Ballantyne: When you break work into little pieces, isn’t it hard to make progress? Many writers can’t do anything with thin slices of time. Or at least they believe they can’t.
Lassiter: Whereas Richard’s superpower is following the Atkins Diet, I guess my strength is working with those little 15 minute blocks. I’ll hammer out as many words as I can or read as much as I can.
Ballantyne: I’m imagining a hamster or gerbil racing on a wheel—a blur of fur for 15 minutes. And then you go back to eating pellets or whatever. Is that how you wrote papers? You would take your 15 minutes, try to get something down on paper, and persist until you eventually had a draft?
Lassiter: Exactly. When I was in grad school, my kids would nap for an hour-and-a-half or so. Most of that time I’d use for grading or lecture prep. And then if I had 15 minutes before they woke up, I’d sneak in a few words on my dissertation or read a few paragraphs of an article. I would leave a lot of breadcrumbs for myself. With my last thirty seconds of writing as my kid is waking up, I’d add quick clips and paraphrases into the document. ‘Here is where you left off’ or ‘This is where you’re headed.’ Leaving breadcrumbs helped me work in shorter blocks.
The complete interview is here.
just a reminder that there are still plenty of us well out of grad school whose years remain precarious
Something in the system is badly broken if a period of borderline unemployment has become all but de rigueur for philosophy PhDs.
There must be something in the Ramen
One day we’ll aspire to seeing coddling your newborn as you work on a dissertation as profoundly sad, not heroic. To be clear: this isn’t an indictment of the individual. It’s an indictment of a hustle culture that has led us to see this as rigorous.
I’m exiting the profession because I simply can’t be bothered to do all of the above, and compromise on so many parts of my non-work life, to possibly secure a job many people end up not liking anyway. I can’t be the only person in this position?
i’ve been trying to get out for three years but am so far deep in the adjunct hole that i’m going to have to either get a certificate in some dumb thing like ‘personnel management’ or work at home depot. the situation is disastrous and the fact that even this story focuses on the pot of gold is borderline fraudulent.
i’m serious you guys. how is it that across platforms and venues contingent work is still entirely marginalized, a blip on the screen? honestly it’s unconscionable.
You’ll get there. Persevere, and find somewhere that understands the currency of your elite qualification. Good luck! 🙂
not only do ‘we’ not traffic in stories about the colleagues who are exploited and then eventually disappear, but i think ‘we’ also hear little about the tenure-track successes without burning ambition whose productivity craters and whose careers revert back to the academic mean of regular teaching and low-impact, intermittent publication.
survivorship bias is a helluva drug