By Kareme D’Wheat

Another semester begins. I arrive early, well dressed, and prepared for action. Like a doctor making a house call, I bring all my own equipment, tools, toys, bells and whistles. I stand before you as the expert in the room. The adult with all the answers. The “Professor.” Which I am, in most regards. But I’m also a fraud, and not because I want to be.Your professor, the well groomed and eloquent person before you, is a fraud. Because the best I can hope to make for all this is $18,000 this year. And I’ll be lucky to make that. Because, as you may have guessed, I am “adjunct,” which is a sparkly way of saying “temp” in academic speak. Although in some regards this makes me the “fun aunt” of your academic career, it also pretty much puts me in the poorhouse.

It’s an awkward…