cool kids

I'm not sure what it means, that I feel most at ease when bantering back and forth with an older generation of academics in our little corner of the institution. And I do mean that...the adjunct work space is in a hidden-away corner of the institution. They aren't really my peers: several Baby-Boomers with grandchildren, mostly Gen X with kids in middle to high school. I'm one of the oddballs. I know there are more of us, but they don't seem to hang out in the corner.

And the weird thing is that I'm okay with that. I don't really want to be reminded of my own generation anymore. Neither those of us who are "making it," nor those of us who suffer from underemployment. I'm insanely jealous of the thirty-somethings with jobs, and hearing about unemployment makes me ill. It seems the more I read about possibly pursuing a PhD and making this academic thing more of a career than just paying the bills, the more I believe it is a terrible idea. And not in the Hollywood, bad-decisions-lead-to-happy-endings sort of way.

My generation seems to be lost. Or at least I am. Of the two "Xennials" writing in this bittersweet article in Good magazine, I side with the admitted "malcontent" born in 1983. I'm right there with you, pal.

But I don't want to hang out with you.

There has to be some name for it--if not, I could come up with one all my own--this compulsion to seek out people who are different, to be lost in the heterogeneous crowd. I always felt better walking around the city by myself. Having a friend along on roadtrips always made it more stressful. Conversing casually with strangers is infinitely easier than opening up to closer acquaintances.

My fear is that the strangers in the adjunct corner aren't strangers anymore. They ask me about Dad, and I share what's going on in my life outside work. I ask them about their wives and kids and travel plans. Horror of horrors! It's wrong, isn't it? Shouldn't I socialize with people who are in the same life stage as I am? What life stage is that, exactly? Chronically stuck. Circling the drain. Failed to launch.

I just had the thought that my musings about the adjunct corner do not qualify as cultural clash. Maybe I'm not so different from the other teachers, despite decades of life in between. That just makes my lack of those "signifiers of success" that much more painful. How did I get into a Gen X mindset without all the Gen X bells and whistles? Where is my mortgage? Where is my white picket fence? Shouldn't I have those before I am qualified to sigh heavily at the snotty Millennials that fill the hallways and roll through the campus stop signs?

The knowledge that many of my peers have over thirty years of secondary teaching experience or doctorates or families seems suspended long enough for me to derive actual pleasure from hanging out in the corner. There is the IT guy whose phone sounds like the Star Trek (TNG) comm, and the geology professor who yells at the nursing faculty for using the community Xerox machine. Granted, those nursing gals do tend to cause several paper jams.

There are the math professors--all former high school teachers--who tease me over my far too subjective discipline of choice. They tease everyone else, too, so it's no big deal. One has to keep his desk super clean because of an immune deficiency, but he makes it entertaining, writing "No Adjuncts Allowed" or piling furniture in front of the desk to prevent the next English professor from sitting down. The mock battle over territory is a welcome respite from fearing the dull stares of students in the next hour.

There is the political science professor that I could probably talk to for hours on end if we didn't have work to do. And she's Republican. That's how deep I'm in this. I get along with people who I would expect to look at my liberal self with conservative scorn. I'm the only art history nerd in the adjunct corner, yet I fit in.

This fitting in is a very strange sensation, mind you, considering my experiences as a student. Before I stood in front of a whiteboard to earn money, I was an outcast. Now, I imagine we are the cool kids of the faculty. Too cool for our own offices. We can't be bothered to hold regular office hours. Health insurance is so over. Our clique is not impenetrable...full-time staff and tenured faculty are welcome to stop by. I don't even mind seeing students in the grocery store anymore. This is naturally what happens when geeks and nerds become cool.

I'm way too comfortable with this. Where is the angst? Wait, I just remembered I'll never be able to retire. Oh, and my part-time socializing eclipses even my closest relationships that are in dire need of repair. There we go, angst recovered!