After seeing orange cones set out to reserve parking spots in the JKB lot every. single. day, I want, just once, those cones set out for me. Maybe the Hinckley Center can set out some orange cones for us and our Adjunct Award Luncheon on April 20? (RSVP today—truly, the more the merrier!).

Of course, having our luncheon on reading day probably means there will be plenty of parking. But it’s the principle of it! For whom the cones reserve!

Help the RWC—and your students!

Over 40% of the RWC’s clients are WRTG 150 students—and 10% are from advanced writing classes: we adjuncts are keeping the RWC humming!

To find ways to better serve students—and adjuncts—and to improve services in general, the RWC team’s course-based writing administrator, Zach Largey, has pleaded, I mean, has asked, that I encourage every adjunct to complete this five-minute survey: BYU Research and Writing Center Assessment (the title could use a little work).

Please take the survey! Help our colleagues at the RWC better identify what works, what needs improvement, and what new ideas need to be explored. In other words, let’s swamp them with data and ideas and opinions!

NOTE: If the survey seems a bit familiar, that’s because it is. To the six people who completed it. 🙂 However, I’ve been told that a couple of new questions have been added! Don’t worry—it still takes just five minutes to complete!

It’s hard being a writer

Making time to write while teaching feels impossible. There’s always one more PowerPoint to make, another reading to find, instructions to write, and a long empty score column on Learning Suite with papers waiting to be graded.

Take comfort—you’re not alone: even award-winning, best-selling author Colson Whitehead has said that he can’t write when he teaches.

But along with teaching, we have our other jobs and church callings, and, for some, parenting responsibilities. Usually by the middle of the semester, I feel like a basketball coach with bad knees: I can tell my students how to write and what good writing sounds like, but I can’t do it myself. I’ve been relegated to the sidelines by life.

But writing gives many of us joy—often the kind of joy that you feel the day after you climb Mount Timp: dang, that is satisfying pain!

So if you’re writing, how do you make time and space for it? Please consider writing a brief article for The Adjunct Advocate. We need to start having more conversations on how to get writing done—in writing and in person.

Also watch this space. I’m hoping this fall to create our own version of National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNWriMo), but the BYU Adjunct Faculty Writing Semester: BAFWriSem. (Uhm, I need to work on the branding a little more.)

A conversation about art and motherhood

I’ve been having conversations about being a teacher, writer, and mother with two full-time BYU professors, Tara Carpenter Estrada (art education) and Hilary Wolfley (dance), as we’ve worked on a forthcoming book, Give and Take (Demeter Press, 2024), which discusses the challenges artist mothers face.

These challenges, and ideas on how they can be managed (or overcome?), will be discussed by Tara and other artists on April 12 at 7 pm in the Reynolds Auditorium in the HBLL.

Writing is a form of art too, and the panel’s conversation is sure to be one we’ll benefit from hearing. Please come if you are a writer, an aspiring writer, or a friend of writer mothers and would like to know how to better support and advocate for them.

It’s my job to help adjuncts!

Please send me an email if you have any questions or concerns or need some help—it’s my job as adjunct liaison to help adjuncts! You can reach me at [email protected].

Stuff for your calendar

• March 23 & 24: Unit Review. Some adjuncts will be asked to share their thoughts with the reviewers—people from BYU and people not from BYU. Represent us well!

• March: The Adjunct Book Club is finally meeting to discuss Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less on Friday, March 31 at 11 am in 4088 JFSB. Yay! If you forgot to RSVP (we’re talking essentialism and eating lunch), send me an email today!

APRIL

• April 6: How to Respond to Students’ Mental Health Crises @ 11 am in 4186 JFSB with Jon Cox, a psychologist at BYU’s CAPS (and Katie’s husband). I know, where was this presentation at the beginning of the semester?! But if we know one thing, it’s this: student crises will continue to happen. Come learn how to respond to students in a way that’s helpful for both you and your students!

• April 14: Tea at 2 pm in 4186 JFSB. Teaching Triumphs! Cha-cha-cha! End the semester on a good note by celebrating: What went well this semester? What pleasantly surprised you? What helped you enjoy teaching?

• April 20: The Adjunct End-of-the-Year Awards Luncheon @ 12 pm on the Hinckley Center’s Third Floor. There will be lunch, recognition of service awards, and cheering—be sure to put it on your calendar and RSVP today!

MAY

May: A Scheduling Survey. Watch your inbox for this survey! We—the English Department, University Writing, and I—hope to use the information we collect to improve the scheduling process and to create a single document that lays out the process so everyone can have a better understanding of how it works. I also hope to put this information on a future website for adjuncts.