Do You Personally Know Your Adjunct Colleagues?

[dinomom]

Yes, I have always invited them. I teach at a SLAC so they are often connected to students in some way, but not always, and include things like the underwater basket-weaving social, the study-broad presentation reception, the new faculty reception, etc.

But I agree with Caracal's point. I don't always love going to these things but I have to go. If I were a part-timer and it was inconvenient to come to campus at some weird time, I would probably not go.

[Wahoo Redux]

It is also extremely awkward, in my experience, to be an adjunct or a VAP and attend a social or scholarly function with faculty who are plugged into the university and may have known each other for years.  One just doesn't fit in.  Small talk is an exercise in strain, and really, unless you happen to share a hobby or something (or even know that you share an interest with everyone in the room), there is very little to talk about.

[mamselle]

You ask open-ended questions. People always like to talk about themselves and their work.

Conversations start with the ones who return the favor and ask back.

If they don't, their loss, go on to someone else.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

You ask open-ended questions. People always like to talk about themselves and their work.

Conversations start with the ones who return the favor and ask back.

If they don't, their loss, go on to someone else.

M.

Bless you, M., but I just hate those kind of conversations.  And these earnest, good-natured attempts to engage people can go as embarrassingly wrong as any other forced situation.

[mamselle]

Umm...not meant at all as snark, but....what other kinds of conversations are there?

I mean, even people I know and talk with every day start with open-ended questions...and then we listen to each other, and talk about what comes up.

It wasn't always easy, I do remember standing around in parties and wishing I could crawl behind a long curtain somewhere or melt into the wall, but that was a really long time ago.

But asking someone else a question and listening to their answer also gives me the initiative, in the sense that I get to choose the person/people I'm going to talk with and then lets me decide if I'm interested in what they're saying, or learning something from them, or whatever.

It's a little like, now that I think of it, how I used to feel about dances. When I first started doing swing dance, for example, I expected people to ask me, following the old "guy asks girl" formula. But then I realized I ended up dancing with people I didn't want to dance with and didn't always get to dance with those I wanted to dance with.

So I switched it up--that being allowed these days--and started asking for myself. I made myself still ask a couple of people each night that I didn't know, since I remembered how that felt, but I stopped fussing about not getting 'asked' to dance (and worrying, as a corollary, about whether my hair or makeup or dress were somehow "wrong") and I just enjoyed the evening.

It did indeed feel awkward at first, and I gained a sense of appreciation for what the guys were going through for all those years. But it got easier after a bit, and the first couple steps were a bit like the open-ended question--we could decide together what we were going to do for that dance and then be done when the music ended (or, in a couple cases, when I had to walk away from someone holding my hand far too tight, or falling all over me or whatever).

Maybe this digression could form another thread; or maybe it's part of--?or at the root of--this thread's conversation about adjuncts and full-time faculty knowing each other. Maybe there are different dances going on in parallel, in fact?

Sorry, all my metaphors come down to dance, I guess.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

Yeah, not to derail, but I just hate party small talk.  Or more specifically, I hate small talk with people who I will probably know only by sight.  That is the nature of the temporary and adjunct positions for most people I have known.

Now, that said, this thread is inspired by our best friend on the faculty who is a PT adjunct (now leaving the faculty), so I am not categorically stating that VAPs and adjuncts are automatically outsiders to everyone (although the anonymity of this same person actually triggered this thread), but if one does not have a gregarious personality or is not earnestly a "people person," these faculty functions meant to foster collegiality are awful----kind of like one of those "staff retreat" thingees.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I've met several of our adjuncts, but they don't usually hang out at the office (mostly they don't have offices), attend faculty meetings, or sit on committees, so I don't have many opportunities to get to know them.

When I was adjuncting in grad school I didn't ever engage with full time faculty, for the same reasons I noted above.

[Caracal]

Yeah, not to derail, but I just hate party small talk.  Or more specifically, I hate small talk with people who I will probably know only by sight.  That is the nature of the temporary and adjunct positions for most people I have known.

Now, that said, this thread is inspired by our best friend on the faculty who is a PT adjunct (now leaving the faculty), so I am not categorically stating that VAPs and adjuncts are automatically outsiders to everyone (although the anonymity of this same person actually triggered this thread), but if one does not have a gregarious personality or is not earnestly a "people person," these faculty functions meant to foster collegiality are awful----kind of like one of those "staff retreat" thingees.

Yeah, I have a couple of people I consider actual friends in the department, but actually now that I think about it, all of those are people I had connections with before I started working at the school. I think I'm a friendly enough person, but I'm not very good at chatting with people I don't know and haven't really interacted with beyond saying hi in the hallway. I've always had the same feeling at academic conferences-although that's even worse.