The Saturday Ponderings

The Teaching Front

I’ve been cut down to two classes from my project four classes this semester. There are a lot of reasons for this, mainly due to declining enrollment, changes in procedures for financial aid and more stringent guidelines tied to student academic progress. It was quite a blow emotionally, one which I will readily admit felt like a demotion after so many semesters of teaching three and four classes at a time.

It was not personal, I should add. The Boss was fair about how the remaining classes were reallocated. All of us in Adjunctland were equally hit. It should be noted that if the Boss wanted to get rid of one of us, he very easily could have done so by saying, “Sorry, I don’t have any classes.”

The loss of the classes nearly led to yet another fiscal crisis but at the last minute, my Mom stepped forward.

“You are going to inherit this house anyway, why not stay here?”

I actually resisted for a bit. There are a lot of reasons. I didn’t want to invade Mom’s space. I worried about whether Trinity and Mom would get along. I worried about a number of things.

On the other hand, it solves all of our fiscal problems. Thus I believe the plan is for my name to go on the deed as co-owner sometime this month or next. Now I readily realize that this means I will bear some obligation for, well, everything tied to the house. Still, those obligations on a house which has already been paid of are going to be far less than they would be for an apartment or a home I might buy on my own.

So it seems that I am to become a home owner.

As for my actual classes, I have an eight and a nine on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays. I’m sitting in a peer’s Modern Civilization (more traditionally known as Western Civilization II) at ten as a way of working to prevent the atrophy of knowledge in my specialty. After that, I’ve got Spanish 102 on the Student Front.

In many respects, the money loss aside, I’ve actually got a pretty good schedule. Now I just need to make the best use of the time I have on hand.

The Writing Front

I haven’t made that much progress since the semester started. A Restoration of Faith is ready for proofreading and revision by yours truly. Once she graduates to second draft status, I’ll contact the reconstituted Murphy’s E-Lite Reader Corps for a run through the Beta Readers.

I’ve got a second project started which I’ll try and put some time in later this weekend.

The Lifeguard Front

I’m slowly working my way through an online training course which is designed to lay the groundwork for the in person classes I’ll be attending next weekend. For those that know me well, you probably wonder how it is going.

Better than usual. The material is far more intuitive and accessible than the nightmare that is Blackboard at Longview. On the other hand, it is going a bit slower than I anticipated. So part of my weekend will be spent trying to complete this material.

The actual in person training this weekend, I suspect, will be very much like a typical qualification class. We’ll be expected to teach it. The only problem I anticipate is that I can be very slow to pick something up, especially if it is hands on. Now once I’ve well and truly got it, I can be fairly fast in explaining it.

We’ll see.

I also put my app in for lifeguard work at the campus pool.

Other Fronts

Not much else to report at the moment. I’ve got plans for the backyard and for the basement but I’ll nee to do some research into both. Otherwise, I’ve got a stack of work to attend to. Best hop to it.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Kniter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri

When you say that it will be difficult, just what did you mean?

We’ve started a new semester.

What more is there to say about that? I’ve lost two of my four classes, which is not unheard of in Adjunctland. In fact, it is actually pretty common. What is unheard of is to work at one campus where you have pretty consistent course loads over a four year period.

To be fair, I wasn’t the only one who suffered. Many did, full timers as well as adjuncts. Still, it has really brought me up short and caused a bit of pondering on my part.

For instance, there is the problem with regard to my training. My academic emphasis in grad school was Ancient History, British History, a bit of the Black Death and some Gender Studies work. All of which qualify me as an instructor of Western Civilization. Technically, it should also qualify me as an instructor of American History at the survey level but there are those who feel otherwise. It doesn’t hurt me now as an adjunct but it probably will hurt me when a full time slot opens up.

The solutions to the problem are the same now as they were ten years ago

1. Quit teaching. Just give up on it and go do something else.
2. Go get the 12 hours of American History. The cost of which will be about $4000 plus and consume a year of my time.
3. Move out of the Kansas City Area and try to find someplace where they don’t care about the 12 hour deficit. Which won’t matter because most places hire PhD’s due to the fact that, well, there is a glut of historians out there.

Now, I was warned repeatedly that getting a job as an historian would be hard. However, I’d been told that many things I wanted to were hard. It is hard to get through college and earn a degree. It is hard to go to war and survive it. It is nearly impossible to get published as a writer of any kind of fiction.

I accomplished all of those hard things. We’re they hard? Yes. Did some of them take longer than I thought they would? Sure, especially getting pubished.

Becoming an instructor of history, on the other hand? Just becoming an adjunct was difficult due to the bit about the twelve hours of American History. I’m not even sure how that rationalization makes any sense at all. American History and European History are tied in at the core level. In American History One for the first few weeks, one basically gives a somewhat watered down series of Western Civ Two lectures. How can one argue that a European Historian isn’t qualified to do that job?

So lately, I find myself wishing I had asked for some qualification on what was meant by hard. Did folks mean hard as in, “It is like trying to open a jar of olives?” Or did they mean hard as in, “You must build your own warp drive from balsa wood and fly to Alpha Centauri?”

I think I might have picked something else if I had known it was the later.

So it goes.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri

The Sunday Writing Front

Since Trinity and I will be staying at my mom’s house for the foreseeable future, I did a bit of work in the basement to create a working space. Mom said that in reality, I should simply think of it as “our” house, since I will inherit it anyway. Still, there is that cultural taboo, the fortysomething living in his mother’s basement.

Frankly, I don’t give a shit about taboos. I care about making progress.

The basement of our home is not really suited for conversion over to a permanent living space. Water tends to seep in to the basement. Still, I don’t need much. We fitted the house with a wifi system so I can work pretty much anywhere in the house. Thus my office, my mancave more or less, is a camp chair, an old grenade crate for a footstool and another box which serves as an end table.

From this location I managed to get the current fiction project up to 5,000 words. The upward limit is 8,000 at the target market.

I plan to get A Restoration of Faith up to second draft status by the time the semester starts. Then I’ll set it aside in order to start on another WH40K project.

Other News

I’ve eaten a little too well over the break and exercised too little. Starting this week I am going to have to work at getting back into fighting shape for lifeguard work.

So it goes.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri

The Writing Front

A Restoration of Faith, Warhammer 40,000

This is a short story project for The Black Library ezine Hammer and Bolter. I’m writing it on speculation and while I need only a 1000 word scene component for my proposal, I am going to write it out to completion. The first draft is currently around 3000 words. Later tonight I’ll tie off the first draft at close to 4000.

In many respects, it is skeletal but I’ll flesh that out over the next few days.

Ultimately, I plan on having anywhere from four to eight short story proposals for Hammer and Bolter by May when their submission window opens up. I’ll then submit them at one week intervals until I’ve run through the batch. Perhaps the only bad news is that they do not respond with a rejection notice.

What is Warhammer 40,000?

Mark Strong explains it pretty well.

Convergence Point

On stand by for a rewrite is my first novel project, Convergence Point. It was rejected by the target market in 2008 as the economy imploded. I spent part of my time last night reading the original 24K words of the proposal. While it is not a bad effort, I think it could use a serious reworking.

The upward goal on this project is to reach 50K words. Once I’ve reached this point, it will go back out to market. My intent is to see if Terri will let me use this as my independent novel project for this semester.

Coming to Terms

This is a Tearing Down Tuesday universe novel project and I worked on it during National Novel Writing Month this last year. I’ll be setting this aside for just a bit until I get the other projects cleared.

So it goes.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri

The Day After the Apocalypse

What are the stages of grief again?

Fuck if I know.

It is always possible that I could lose yet another course. Yes, enrollment is that bad, folks. If I drop to one class, frankly, the only things that would keep me on campus is the loan deferment and the Spanish 102 class. Teaching a class gets you a free class. Why would I give that up?

So, what is the plan?

Well, I am fairly confident that I can snag a slot as a lifeguard instructor for the upcoming summer. I need to get rolling on the online component of the training, which is, I think, the only aspect which really gives me pause. I do better in an actual classroom setting in my humble opinion. However, my opinion be damned, the rent, again, is riding on this.

If I get that slot then I can probably make up about half of what I lost in Adjunctland. The key, after that, would be to regain at least a quarter to half of the remainder. For that, I think more and more that a position at the Longview Rec Center is best.

The Pros? They know me and they’ve seen me swim laps thus they have some level of confidence in my abilities. I am on campus three days a week anyway which means I could probably work in the afternoons after my Spanish class.

The Cons? It is minimum wage and in order to sweeten the pot, I’d probably need to volunteer to come to campus on either Tuesday or Thursday in the mornings. However, if I worked fifteen hours a week at Longview and picked up three weekends a month as an Instructor, things might work out well enough.

There is one potential benefit to sticking only with lifeguard instructor work and that is that Tuesday-Thursdays could be used for the writing effort.

I just don’t know. The good news is that we won’t need to worry about any serious bills until April Fool’s Day.

I think the most depressing aspect of all of this is that I hoped the Lifeguard Instructor slot tied in with summer lifeguard work might finally push my annual income close to $30K. Now, I’ll be lucky if I can reach $20K.

So it goes.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri

The Teaching Front: It is the Apocalypse.

In many respects, I am a blessed man. For four and a half years, I have been able to teach three to four classes a semester at once campus. This is virtually unheard of in the world that is known as Adjunctland.

Today, that came to an end. We had a drop in enrollment within the community college system and a 17% drop at our particular campus. This hit all of the classes pretty hard.

How many classes do I have right now?

I have two. Fortunately they are both on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays, which ties into my Spanish 102 class. That class, I might add, seems to have survived the cuts that were the result of low enrollment.

So, what happened?

Hard to say.

Some say that students, disgruntled with the jobless recovery coupled with the modest standards at our institution, simply gave up and walked away. Some say that some students were weeded out by their inability to show some level of academic progress, losing their financial aid in the process. The requirement to pay for the courses upfront probably isn’t helping matters either.

I suspect things will not get any better anytime soon. If anything this will prompt our department to offer fewer classes in the Fall, hurting all adjuncts in the department. And when the 2013-2014 Academic Year arrives, I have it on good authority that there will be fewer classes still.

What about other campuses and colleges?

For the most part, I am precluded from teaching at most institutions due to the lack of a PhD. I can’t teach in a public school because I lack (and refuse, frankly) to go through the farce of earning a certification. As for other campuses in our system, there are those who feel that only historians with 18 hours of American History courses on their transcripts should teach American History. No other historian need apply, which was the main reason I languished in academic exile for six years in the first place.

Change is afoot, for better or worse.

What are my options?

First and foremost, there is lifeguarding. I’ve applied for a slot as lifeguard instructor with my summer employer. I have every confidence that I will complete the training in relatively good order. God knows I’ll have the time I need to focus on it. This should bridge some of the gap in pay. There are other pools I can work at as well until summer arrives which will help, to include the campus pool at Longview.

Hey, I don’t have to worry about eligibility now, do I?

Second, in a worst case scenario, I could return to private security work. I’d rather not do this unless I had a signed novel contract in my hands with an advance to boot. Otherwise, I think I’l take my chances doing something else.

Finally, there is the possibility, slim perhaps, of full time employment as a lifeguard at a new indoor facility I am aware of.

We’ll have to wait and see.

The Writing Front

I’ll be pushing forward with a short story project and a novel project respectively.

Other Fronts

There isn’t much else to report.

Hell of a way to start the new semester, and the new year. I feel more and more like I am living in a third world country.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri

The Writing Front

I managed to write 1400 words on a new short story project yesterday. If things work out right, I might be able to get some more writing done later today. However, before I do that, I have to run Trinity out to a part of Kansas City I truly detest traveling to (too much history, too personal for public discussion). Everytime I go there, I feel my intelligence draining out of my body. Following the trip to Fucktardistan we’re going to hit the pool for some laps.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for what will most likely be bad news for the upcoming semester.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
Kansas City, Missouri

The Spin Up for a New Semester, Winter 2012.

The Personal Front:

For the first time in nearly a year, we’ve got most of our budget holes fairly well patched. We’re living with my mom until our new two bedroom apartment comes online in mid-February so that will help on some expenses.

Now the only thing I really need to worry about is whether I’ll have all four of my projected classes as an instructor, or as few as two.

The Lifeguard Front:

I’ve received word that I will be attending training as a lifeguard instructor candidate for the 2012 Year. That does not mean that I am automatically hired for the position. I’ll still have to master the material, prove that I am capable of teaching and demonstrate that I can pass my knowledge on to teenage students. The good news is that my work as a college instructor of history should provide some insights on how to teach our lifeguard candidates. I think another strength I bring to the table is that the lifeguard training is very much like Sergeant’s Time in the Army for the Common Task Test.

More or less, you follow a script, a relatively simple one. So I am excited about that.

On the other side, I applied for a management position. I think I bring a lot to the table in that regard as well. Still, I am not taking anything as a given. It is entirely possible that I could spend next summer working as an entry level lifeguard again. If that happened, that would not be the end of the world.

Finally, as a fallback to a shortfall in adjunctland, I’ve got a line on a possible lifeguard job which might help patch a few gaps until summer. If I fall short, we’ll see about chasing after that lead.

The Writing Front

I’ve spent the last few days reviewing the material in the Warhammer 40,000 universe with an eye towards submitting some fiction to The Black Library. After a cursory review, I’ve come to believe that I can bring my strengths as a writer to bear in that marking, something I have never truly believed in the more traditional science fiction markets.

For those that do not know, Warhammer 40,000 is a property of Games Workshop United Kingdom. The universe is roughly 40,000 years in the future featuring a galaxy spanning tyranny known as the Imperium of Man, ruled by the God-Emperor of Mankind. If you want to know more, just google up Warhammer 40K on the net.

I also think I can bring my training as an historian to bear on this in a way that was often difficult in my other endeavors.

It is good to have some focus again. As an aside, I’ve already had an offer or two of assistance with swordfight scene construction. I’ve taken fencing classes and I know some basics but I’ll want to run the swordfights by someone with a bit more experience.

Also, I am giving serious thought to reconstituting Murphy’s E-Lite Reader Corps. More on that as I decide one way or the other.

Finally, I will be pushing forward with Coming to Terms, my NaNoWriMo novel project from last year. My goal is to reach at least 50K words overall and perhaps as much as 75K words. We’ll see how that goes.

The Teaching Front, Adjunctland:

Well, I am slated to teach four classes but two of them look a bit iffy. I’ve got a Tuesday night class that looks grim. I can probably sustain the loss of one class without too much trouble but I can’t handle the loss of a second. I’ll need to follow up on that lifeguard job I mentioned earlier.

I’m ready to get back at it. I’ll revise a couple of lectures that I think are particularly weak for American History 120. As for 121, I am pretty much going to leave it as it is.

The syllabus will see heavy modification again due to some issues I had last semester, particularly with plagiarism.

Finally, I am going to start issuing multiple choice chapter based quizzes, especially in the evening classes. It is the only way I know to get them to take the textbook seriously.

The Student Front: Spanish 102

I have a bad feeling that I have forgotten a great deal over the last four weeks. My plan to review daily fell apart pretty quickly. Still, I aim to do better on this round if I can. The B grade really irked me given that I was in striking distance of an A until mid-semester.

Meh.

Other Fronts

I’ve fed a bit too well over the last two months and it shows. I’ve not made it into the pool as much as I might like. However, the good news is that on those rare instances when I did make it to the pool, I was able to swim 200 to 600 yards nonstop without too much trouble. With some effort and a change in eating habits, I should be able to push my way back to fighting shape.

Otherwise, it has been unseasonably warm here in the Midwest, which is fine by me.

So it goes.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri

Leaving the Pod Behind.

The Moving Front

The bathroom is more or less done with a bit of spot cleaning left to be cleared off the deck. In the meantime between the two of us, we managed to pack most of our belongings or get them to a point where they can be packed. The bulk of our possessions are staged along the north wall in front of the door, ready to be whisked right on out into the U-Haul we’ll pick up on the 4th. Trinity packed up nearly half of the Pod after her semester ended a week before mine did.

Oh, I suspect Abbie the Evil Genius knows something is afoot.

We’ve been here at the Northland Lofts for three years more or less. We’ve had some good times, especially our parties, which turned out to be a bigger success than I thought they’d ever be. And we’ve had our rough times. Still, it is pretty clear to me that our time here is at an end. We’ve outgrown the Pod.

For one thing, it’d be nice to have a door I can close to an office or the bedroom. It’d be nice to have a real patio again and access to an apartment swimming pool. Basically, I think a change is overdue.

At this point, I believe the only thing I will really miss about the Pod are the large windows on the east side which reach from ceiling nearly to the floor. There is always ample light.

We’ll be moving up to my mom’s for a month and a half while we wait for the new place to open up. Mom and I have worked to get Dad’s old room ready. To be honest, Mom did most of the work but I did go and spend an afternoon painting up there so it isn’t like I was a total slacker. She’ll save us some money and aggravation by helping us to clear the apartment earlier than March 1st.

So it goes.

The Writing Front

I conducted a bit of a survey of the marketplace in an effort to figure out where I should focus my attention. I could continue what worked in 2007 and 2008 but I suspect that I am never going to write anything which will suit those markets. I do believe I have novels in me and I believe that if I am allowed to write a short story I actually enjoy, I can probably do that as well.

So I’ll be tweaking my efforts and focusing on two fronts.

First, I’m going to complete a novel. It may not be marketable but who cares? Writers write and I’ve got something workable.

Second, I’m going to send some short story proposals off to a media tie in market. I think my preference for combat scenes will serve me well in that regard. Further, I can generate a fair number of proposals in the same time it would take for me to finish one short story.

So it goes.

Happy New Year, folks.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri

There were good things and there were bad things.

It is the end of the year and time to look back, this time without anger.

The Good

On the writing side of the house I estimate that I wrote roughly 75K words of fiction for one endeavor or another. Most of this will not see publication with my name on the banner but this is not a bad thing. I had a hand in the creation of three novels, one of which will see print. The National Novel Writing Month effort yielded 23K of those words, far short of my goal for that month but far more than I would have had otherwise.

On the summer job front, my lifeguard job finally became a reality. It had been a deferred dream of sorts and the need to find summer work of some sort while I live in Adjunctland provided the justification. My summer employer took very good care of me and I have to say that I am looking forward to another summer with them. As a bonus, my overall health and fitness improved dramatically, giving me an extra boost of energy for the start of the Fall Semester which surprised even me.

On the Spanish Front, I managed to pull a B average for Spanish 101, erasing the stigma of a D minus from my High School years.

On the Military Research Consultant front, I helped John Birmingham wrap up Angels of Vengeance, which concludes the Disappearance Trilogy. It will be on the bookshelves stateside come April 2012. John has been a great friend and mentor over the years. I am lucky to have him in my corner.

Trinity and I celebrated our third year anniversary as a couple. We’re stubborn, I guess.

Finally on the Good Side, I am in my fifth year of teaching as an adjunct instructor of college history. I’ve been blessed in that I’ve had three to four classes per semester since I started in 2007. In many ways, I’ve managed to make up the six year experience deficit once you stop to consider that many adjuncts are lucky if they can get two classes a semester. It is good to find vindication and validation in a field previously blocked off by those who felt I had no place in the classroom.

I suppose if you want to add to the Good list, you could add in Abigail Faith French Murphy, or more commonly known as Abbie. The Boston Rat Terrier managed to win me over a lot more quickly that I thought she would. Worse yet, she is scary smart.

The Bad

We had budget woes. We had car woes. We had busted teeth, broken glasses and a bout of diverticulitis which sent me to the Emergency Room not once but twice.

On the writing front, the submission and publication side of things remains stalled completely out. Hopefully the move to a new two bedroom apartment will solve some of trouble, providing me with a true office for the first time since 2007.

I did not get to travel at all.

The Toshiba I bought in 2008 finally gave up the fight with the computer screen. Mom had to purchase a replacement, which is what this entry is being typed up on.

The Ugly

My father passed away after a sixteen year long war against three forms of Agent Orange induced cancer. He passed on the day before my fortieth birthday, which is enough to give anyone pause concerning their mortality. We laid him to rest up at Leavenworth National Cemetery later that month with military honors and a healthy presence of family, friends and well-wishers.

With regard to politics, I reached a point politically where I could no longer stomach some of what the Republicans seem to be peddling. I will most likely vote Democrat across the board for the first time since 2002.

So it goes.

It is my hope that next year is a better one. The pieces are in place for an overall improvement. We’ve got most of our budget holes patched up. Trinity’s car should be operational by the first week of the new semester. I’ve got a good chance at becoming a Lifeguard Instructor for my summer employer. I plan on following that up by applying for management as well.

Let us hope that 2012 is better than 2011 was.

Happy New Year, folks. Be safe out there.

Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri