In this episode, we document the experience of working as an adjunct. To help us understand this experience better, we talked with James Parisot. James has been working as an adjunct for the last 8 years. He started to work as an adjunct when he was a PhD student. After he got his PhD, he moved to Philadelphia, he published his first book, and he is working on a second book, in addition to many other projects, but he has to continue working as an adjunct because he has to make money and he likes teaching. James showed us with great honesty the everyday life of an adjunct, the true emotional and physical struggles that adjuncts can have, and ultimately the unspoken feelings of being trapped in the adjunct system. He portrays the life of an adjunct so well that you can understand why an adult who works and makes money can still have credit card debts; why adjuncts might not want to fully emotionally commit themselves to their students because they might stop working at that college; why they can feel exhausted and emotionally drained as they have to teach multiple courses simultaneously at more than one location. Our goal is to portray the changing landscape of higher education and also open an avenue to discuss the fact that the main burden of higher education is placed on adjuncts' shoulders, even though they are not rewarded enough and are not provided with stable securities.

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