Postscript
An open letter to Professor Bubbles.
Next Time
I (postscript) An Open Letter
An open letter to Professor Bubbles: How could you, and why did you. Seriously.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE: This section has been previously published under Zuko’s Musings as a vocab word essay regarding the word ire. In this iteration, have changed the names of institutions and individuals mentioned, or have left out their names entirely.
Postscript
An Open Letter to Professor Bubbles
I understand, I’m invisible. I assume you had no idea that what you did was a problem at all. As I sat, reeling, from the automatic email invite to the event, I admit it took me a few minutes to register what it meant. And when it finally sank in, I honestly couldn’t believe that such a nice, bubbly-seeming, intelligent person could do such a thing. There’s no way such apparent malice was intended.
You probably don’t even know what I could possibly be so hurt and angry about. I’ll explain: it’s about the email I got from the invite-bot through school. You know—the school where we both teach, where you’re full time and I’m considered part time, though my hours and expertise are at least equal to yours, and my seniority exceeds yours by more than a decade. It was an invite to a workshop hosted by the official stage combat club, a student-run organization that I am in charge of, or at least I have been till now. I thought I was. It’s a knife-fighting for stage course. Sounds great. Nothing about who’s teaching it in the invite, all I know is that I had no idea the stage combat club was active again, and certainly hadn’t heard about this workshop. Later I found out that you’re the instructor for this one-off class.
I doubt I crossed your mind for one instant until I contacted you later, in my surprise, wondering what this event was about and how. After all, an adjunct professor is a nonentity. Why would a non-person enter your thoughts for an instant as you planned such a fun and educational event for your students? As you whipped up the stage combat club officials to begin again, without emailing me or probably even remembering I exist. You had just come back from traveling to LA to get some extra training (something I’ve never been able to afford), why wouldn’t you want to share it with your students? And I guess, judging from this, they are your students. Not mine. Not even ours.
No one cares about the feelings of serfs, or indentured servants. Caring for their integrity or dignity doesn’t happen. Because those things don’t exist in a nonentity like a contingent worker. I’m sure there’s no malice or hatred involved at all in the planning, scheduling, and executing of this official club event. I don’t think you actually hate me—on the contrary, I bet I didn’t even cross your mind as you organized this.
Can you understand why this was so deeply insulting and hurtful to me? Or are you feeling defensive of your own expertise? Listen carefully. I’ll lay it out in what I hope are clear terms:
I’ve been teaching for this Theatre department since 2005. I created the stage combat class from scratch—nobody had ever taught this subject at that school before me, and so I took a blank syllabus form and built the course from square 0 to a fully official lower-division course. It took a few years of work to do so.
I was writing the textbook at the time I was accepted as adjunct in the theatre department, worked on it that whole first year I was there, until it was published, with students in my classes here featured in its images, in 2006. My book has been used as the official required text for the class ever since.
The official club was formed by stage combat students of mine, who’d taken said class and wanted to continue learning the art from me, in 2008.
Now, I wasn’t and am still not allowed to be the official club advisor because I’m an adjunct nonentity, but I was always the head instructor of all the workshops we did during club. I used to be the only faculty with the expertise to do so and so it wasn’t an issue for a while—the tech prof was official and he’d help us maintain our weapons and built a big storage unit for them, etc. When you were hired, of course you were put in as the official advisor for that club. Totally sound, and it wouldn’t have made sense for you not to be, seeing that you also have experience in stage combat arts. I thought I’d still be the main, or at the very least a co-instructor for the club. Little did I think I’d be completely shouldered out of the entire thing.
Do you understand? By creating this workshop without consulting or even thinking of me, you’ve waltzed in and taken this thing away from me. You stole it, after I’ve put my heart, labor, and expertise into it for 14 years. You’ve been working here for what, 3? Not only did you appropriate, assimilate, and claim this thing I built as your own, you didn’t even tell me you’d done so. I learned about it from an automated invite.
I didn’t know you had gotten the club back up and running, with fewer student officers than is normally required. I was not involved in the re-organization of the club, or of the workshop which was happening a mere week from the automated invite. If I hadn’t somehow been somewhere in the system, would I ever have known about it? Would you have ever let me know it was happening, let alone personally invited me if I hadn’t contacted you about it, in shock?
Your response, when I emailed you in surprise that any of this was happening, was a litany of your recent training, and a side note that I should “feel free to come.”
I should feel free to come.
Can you understand how insulting this is?
Probably not—I am a nonentity, as we’ve established. I must remind you of my existence, or you forget about me. You’ve probably forgotten about me again already.
What a horrifically colonizer thing to say: “Feel free to come to this wonderful thing you made. It’s mine now, but I will allow you to come. Not to be in charge, or to teach, but only to attend. I probably will even let you in for free, if you’re nice to me.”
I never once entered your thoughts as you stole my work from me. Admit it. Not once. Not half a thought. And now that I have infringed upon your consciousness? You’ll promptly forget about me again, I have no doubt.
Unless I make you remember, by causing you pain. And why am I expending energy on causing pain? Me, who’s been trained as a martial artist to avoid conflict at all costs and to be a gentle warrior, strong in my peacekeeping duties? Because I’ve had enough.
Enough.
I am angry.
I’ve been angry for decades—I’ve been adjuncting for over 20 years total, uttering Yes Sir May I Have Another, believing in the dangling carrots, believing in the systemic gaslighting that tells me if I don’t get treated better by my job, and can’t get a better job, it’s somehow my fault. My own shortcomings. That’s not true. It’s not me, it’s you. You, and the system.
I don’t count as an artist, a professional, or even a human being. I learned this from the stipend debacle in particular, but really it’s inherent in how the system works.
This letter will do nothing. It won’t affect your tenure candidacy. It won’t get you fired. It won’t get me into that position you occupy, which I applied for twice and had no chance of getting, after 10 and then 15 years of good service to the department. This letter won’t do anything, to you. Now, I might get fired. Except it’s not fired—it’s an amorphous non-renewing of a contract. It’s happened to me before, at other places, for less or even for no reason. If I do get ‘fired,’ there’ll be tens if not hundreds of younger, less bitter scholars flocking to the opening, brandishing PhDs like so many twenty dollar bills madly waving in the hands of an infomercial audience.
See, the thing is? I would never do this to anyone, ever. Not to my worst enemy. I would never demean and dehumanize another person the way you did me.
You didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’m subhuman, so I never counted. I never entered your brain because a nonentity, a middle aged queer woman, an adjunct, has no say, no power, no dignity, and no humanity, even in the great works which she herself has created from her own expertise, labor, love, and work, from the ground up. That doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I don't exist.
The younger, blonder, more privileged tenured professor, though? You? You’re an actual human being. You, in contrast to the adjunct, are a professional artist. You count. I do not. Never have.
This letter will be dismissed as another queer, another woman, another marginalized person, being too loud, overreacting. Another woman getting hysterical about nothing. And it may indeed get me ‘fired’. But I’ve finally had enough. This letter won’t stop you from swallowing my art—if and when I get shouldered out of the department, it’ll all be there for the taking and I won’t even be there to attempt to protect it. But obviously this will happen anyway, and I refuse to remain there while you appropriate my hard work and then deign to invite me to witness it. Either I’m there and you include me in my own work, or I get ‘fired’ and leave. Whatever happens I can’t do a damn thing about it.
It’s funny: I was naive enough, after all these years, to think that after the racism and harassment controversies of this school and department administration of the past couple years, that maybe those in power were stopping and thinking a little more about how ruthlessly they act toward everyone else there.
Stupid of me. That’s what long years of being gaslighted does to a brain. Well, that’s it for me. What do I have to lose? A poverty-wage job that doesn’t even honor me in the small ways it used to? How could it get worse for me? Actually, you know what? I quit. At least I can be in control of that.
Just: one request, before I fade yet again into invisibility: keep using my textbook for the official stage combat course, once you aggressively take that over too. Yeah?
Eh, who am I kidding.
Professor. Bubbles. If it weren’t for that pole up his @$$ he wouldn’t have a spine.
Horrible injustice.
Hugs to you, Jenn. Glad you wrote about this.