Aiming at Control and Losing Control in the Workplace

Last week, I gave an interview to a student writing a thesis about how Stoic philosophy and practice can productively inform the domain of business.  One of the topics that inevitably came up was what has come to be called the "dichotomy of control".  This is a distinction articulated by the Late Stoic philosopher Epictetus between what is in our control, or is "up to us" (ep'hemon in Greek) and what is not in our control or up to us (ouk ep'hemon). It has come to play a centrally important role in the contemporary revival and reinterpretation called "modern Stoicism".

Like most components of Stoic philosophy, this dichotomy seems very simple (especially if one only focuses on Epictetus early discussions of it). It turns out to be quite a bit more complex if one actually reads beyond Epictetus' very short Enchiridion and studies the much fuller Discourses.  There are several reasons for that, two of which I'll just outline here  (I'll elaborate them in more general terms in a later post).

Back To Being A Professor Again

The first half of my academic career, I held the rank of Assistant Professor.  While I taught for Ball State University in their extended education program - teaching Philosophy and Religious Studies classes at Indiana State Prison - that was the highest rank I could attain, since I wasn't tenure track, but rather had yearly contracts.  It was unfortunate, since given my publications at the time, I would have been eligible for promotion early on.

I taught for Ball State for six years, then after the Indiana DOC phased out college prison education, I moved down to Fayetteville State University, starting there as an Assistant Professor as well.  When I left after three years -  moving up to New York, where my then-fiancee resided - I would have been ready to apply early for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.

Instead, from that point on, I taught as an adjunct, first for Marist College (pretty continuously from 2011 to last Fall), then for several academic startups (Oplerno, the GCAS), and now more recently here in Milwaukee for Marquette University, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and Milwaukee Area Technical Institute.

Working as an adjunct is quite different in many respects from the much more secure, full-time, part-of-the-faculty status that comes with being a professor.  With the exceptions of a few academic institutions and systems (and this largely results from strong unions), adjuncts generally aren't paid particularly well and enjoy few (if not no) benefits.  They also can't count on continued employment.  Occasionally, classes assigned to them - sometimes even classes they developed - are poached by tenure-track professors who decide they would like to take them.

One place I've been teaching over the last year where adjuncts are particularly appreciated and thoughtfully taken care of, is the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.  Then again, from what I can see, it's quite a well-run institution in general.  Highly student centered.  Administrators who clearly understand the mission of the school and who draw upon the talents of their faculty.  Good lines of communication.  All those aspects would already make it a good place to teach and work in my view.

But they also do things right when it comes to adjuncts.  In quite a few other places, if you are an adjunct, you're treated by tenure track faculty and administrators - though not by students (who often don't know who is an adjunct and who isn't) - as if you don't belong and are fortunate to be there at all.  At MIAD, you are invited in to nearly everything.  As far as I can tell, there's no divide existing between the full-time and part-time people.  MIAD provides us an adjunct office, stocked with tea and coffee, and we are encouraged to spend as much time as we'd like on campus.  The pay is good, and MIAD schedules upcoming classes well over a month before any of the other places I teach.

I got an email recently reminding all of us that, as adjuncts, we could and should apply for increase in rank.  The ranks at MIAD are Lecturer, then Adjunct Assistant Professor, Adjunct Associate Professor, and then finally Adjunct Professor.  Each of them represents a step up in status or title, but also an increase in payment per class.  I looked over the requirements for each rank, and then had to email my chair, because I wasn't sure whether the number of credit hours taught referred to hours taught at MIAD or elsewhere.  If just MIAD, I'd be at the lowest rank, but with 20 years of teaching, if the credit hours could be from elsewhere, I'd qualify for a much higher rank.

She wrote me back and informed me of something I'd been ignorant of the entire time I've been teaching for MIAD.  I came in at the highest rank.  I've been listed as an Adjunct Professor this entire time.  That was a welcome surprise to me!

It may seem like something rather trivial, but I've refrained from calling myself a philosophy professor for years, since officially, I didn't have that title, and I'm a rather literal person who's a bit of a stickler about truthfulness.  People would call me "professor", and sometimes I'd point out that technically speaking, I no longer could claim that title.  Now, however, I can call myself  and be called "professor" entirely in good faith.  And it's a small thing, but that feels quite good to me.

A Strange Assumption About Philosophy

Last month, I was invited by Carthage College to provide a workshop to members of their Philosophy Club, and to the philosophy majors.  It's one that I've spoken on a number of times, on a topic that always proves to be a good draw: Outside of academic teaching, with a Philosophy degree, how can you make a living?  

It is much more reflective of our culture - academic, popular, and otherwise - that this is even a question that requires the sort of answers I (and others) provide.  People are genuinely puzzled about this.  Students, professors, parents, academic administrators, advisors - among others - they all do want to know:  what can you do with a philosophy degree? And they're asking because it seems to many that the only reliable prospect is teaching that same discipline one studies.

As the possibilities for pursuing academic career tracks become more restricted - it's been a brutal job market for decades now, and the available jobs have seen pay, benefits, and security continually eroding  - this problem becomes more pressing.

One of the positive aspects to giving these sorts of talks and workshops (I also coach individual clients as well) is that I do get to deliver good news.  Provided they don't passively rely upon the credential of a philosophy degree to automatically slot them into a position, people who earn a philosophy degree - whether a BA, an MA, or a Ph.D. - actually do find decently remunerative and intellectually engaging work in an amazingly wide range of fields. 

It gets even better.  Skill-sets, dispositions, and even areas of knowledge that the discipline of philosophy turn out to be consistently in high demand from potential employers and clients.  How do we know that?  Survey after survey after survey, year after year.  Relative positions change from list to list, but you're almost always going to find critical thinking, complex problem-solving, written communication, and a number of other important skills and dispositions asked for (and viewed as all too often lacking)!

There is plenty of evidence, in multiple modes, that getting - or rather earning - a philosophy degree is actually a prudent career move.  So why all this anxiety then?  Why these concerns?  You could say that it's just a matter of ignorance, which can be ameliorated or dispelled.  But that's only part of the picture.  There's an assumption resting at the core of this, one that is really strange, if you consider it.

The assumption is this:  The right use of a philosophy degree - and everything that goes into it - is to teach the discipline of philosophy.  Anything else is in some way inferior, less philosophical.  There's actually a perception among some philosophy professors - and they pass it on to their students - that if you can't find a job teaching philosophy, and you do something else that draws upon your philosophy degree, you have failed.  You have "sold out" rather than persevering. 

When you step back from it, that's a really weird way of thinking about a body of literature, a set of activities, a family of intellectual traditions, and sets of intentional practices and modes of living - because in its fuller sense, that's what philosophy really is - that philosophy's prime purpose and function would be replicating itself through teaching and publishing.

What other discipline - unless it is in a kind of decline or corrupted state - would construe its relation to the wider world, and all the other human activities and occupations, in that way?  That's not how philosophy was understood by many of its practitioners - whose texts we still study and teach (and for some of us, apply) - throughout most of its history.  Many of them were in fact polymaths and interdisciplinary experts.  Some actually had day jobs, or took side gigs.  Quite a few of them served in other capacities.  And for many of them, this was not something radically separated from their philosophical education and activity.

It is a strange assumption, one that so many take for granted in my field today. Only when we linger with it, and think about just how weird that notion is, can we begin to undo the damage and rigidity of thinking it imposes on its believers.  And to bring this to a close, the fact that we don't have to buy into that assumption is another bit of good news I try to convey to philosophy students in these talks and workshops.