Day 1

I’m back! Here we go again, another Women’s History Month, another marathon. Year four and counting. I hope you can follow me all the way through, right to the end. I could use someone else making this journey with me.

It feels so much like women’s rights are waning sometimes, doesn’t it? Recent Supreme Court appointments suggest that may not be an illusion. We still have so much of a fight ahead, and women around the world are facing much worse things than we face. It’s tempting sometimes to say to hell with it, go back to bed, take a bubble bath, binge watch TV (I would fill in a show here, but I don’t really watch TV, so I don’t have a show to fill in; put in your favorite for me).

So, tonight, I begin my little part. Another story I have snatched from my life. It is a little thing, maybe seeming trivial. It becomes large because it is on top of so many other little things. You can put the smallest of pebbles in a pile, and at some point, they qualify as a heap. When? I don’t know. I leave such questions for the philosophers and the mathematicians to fight out. It is not a question for a scientist, because there is no scientific answer to that question. It is a matter of perspective.

Tonight’s story is very much the real thing. I changed the names to protect the innocent, the guilty, and everyone in between. So here it is, Day 1 and counting.

SCHEDULE

 “Fall schedules are ready!” Gordon arrived with a fanfare, flapping the papers, inviting the faculty to find out what they would be teaching. He had an air of Santa Claus bringing presents to the kids on Christmas, grinning from ear to ear.

Carmen glared at him. She was still not used to the new system, a system implemented for the first time this semester, where faculty did not write their own schedules. Now the associate deans were writing schedules, and she was discovering how little they understood about the college, the students, and the classes under their care. She had to go toe-to-toe with Gordon about the scheduling of her lab. “I can’t have it before Wednesday afternoon.” She went over with him, as patiently as it was possible in the circumstances, the situation with live organisms and the order. “They aren’t shipped until Monday”, she told him.

“So arrange to have them come in the week before.” He shrugged and continued to write down a Tuesday morning lab.

“Then they are all dead by the time the weekend arrives. And we’ve wasted all that money on the purchase.” She threw the last in because she knew wasted money always won the day. It did. Her lab this semester was on Thursday morning, like it had always been when she scheduled it.

Now here was Gordon, waving around schedules, acting like a semaphore, or something. Carmen choked down what she wanted to say, and joined the rest of the faculty in the large open area where students sat…except there were no students today. It was a holiday for them. Gordon was passing out schedules like they were mail at a M*A*S*H or something.

Carmen was the last to get her schedule, as usual. Gordon held onto it as he passed it her way, tugging just a little as though he wasn’t going to let her have it. She let go and turned away. She refused to play that game anymore. She was tired of it, she was tired of him, she was just…tired. She returned to her office. Let him track her down and deliver it; she had no intention of returning to his presence.

“Carmen?” Gordon hesitated in the door of her office. “Is something wrong? Are you sick?”

“No. Why?” She kept her back to him.

“You’re usually so…cooperative.” He sank into the chair usually occupied by student bottoms…well, actually, mostly empty, since getting students to come to the office to talk to her was about as easy as holding back a tsunami with a butterfly net. She smiled at the image. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. I’m busy, and I need to get my grading done.”

“Here’s your fall schedule.” Gordon handed it her way; she didn’t take it or even look at it.

“Put it on the desk. I’ll look at it when I’m done with grading.” She continued to keep her back toward him.

Gordon hesitated, not sure what to make of the new situation. As he said, Carmen had always been cooperative. She had put up with whatever he did to her, done the tasks he’d assigned her, and never talked back. What was wrong with her? He shook his head and returned to the rest of the faculty, armed with fall schedules, red pens, and prima donna temperaments. He tried to duck out past them, but it was no use. He was surrounded.

Carmen waited until he left the building before she looked at her schedule. She assumed it would be the same it usually was; not much changed around here. A typical spring schedule, a typical fall schedule. Except they were one science teacher short now; Annalise left, and they refused to replace her. Gordon called her the other day to ask if she could teach Anatomy & Physiology. She told him that would be fine, secretly thrilled. It was a dream class for her, the sort of class that utilized her teaching skills and kept her sharp.

The schedule did not include Anatomy & Physiology. She stared at the strange new interloper on her schedule…Structure and Function of the Human Body. Sort of like Anatomy and Physiology, only…not. No lab. Totally online. No challenge, no pleasure, just a grind to teach. Okay, she could live with it. Guess they didn’t have as much need for A&P as she thought. She signed her schedule and shoved it in the mail slot to return to Gordon. She didn’t think much about it.

“Hey, Carmen, wanta join us in the lounge for lunch?” Jared stuck his head in her office. “I know, I know, you usually stay in here for lunch…just once. We’d love to have you. You’ve been too busy lately, and we don’t get to talk much.”

Carmen shoved her grading aside, grabbed her soup, and joined her colleagues. Only two days since Gordon brought schedules around and there was already talk of mutiny, of beheading, of walking the plank…fortunately, it was all in jest. The schedules were a mess, they were unworkable, and it would take overtime to straighten out the mess, but what else was new? She didn’t say much, just listened. Her schedule wasn’t messed up, but that was because she sat down with him last semester and gave him thorough instruction on what would and would not work. He appeared to have actually listened, for once.

“Hey, Carmen, how about your schedule?”

“Not much”, she said. “It’s pretty much my usual, except he added Structure and Function. You know, because Annalise left. He said it would be A&P, but I guess maybe we didn’t need anyone.”

“He hired an adjunct for A&P.” Linda was stabbing her pen at her schedule, trying to find a way to make it work. “They needed it. I don’t know why he didn’t use you. We have other Structure and Function teachers.”

“Oh, that’s because he asked me which I thought would be better”, Jared said. “He called me and asked me what you were best qualified for. I didn’t think A&P would be a good fit, so I told him that.”

“What? Why?” Carmen stared at her friend. He was one of the few truly nice faculty, one of the ones who wouldn’t stab a friend in the back.

“Come on, Carmen, you have to teach dissection for A&P. I guess you didn’t know that.” Jared flung the insult casually, not realizing he was insulting her.

“I did know that. I guess you didn’t know I taught dissection for five years while I was in Texas.” She dropped her spoon. “I…I’m done eating. I think…I better go back to my grading.” She fled, almost in tears. She was going to be teaching a class she didn’t relish, and it was the fault of her best friend in the office. She couldn’t believe it.

What she could believe is that Gordon would go to Jared. Jared had no knowledge of her background or resume beyond what they’d talked about. He had only known her three years; he was one of their newest employees, a man the same age as her son. The key, she realized, was man. Gordon rarely dealt directly with the women; he was always asking Jared, the only male in their department, about everything. Things about Carmen’s class…he asked Jared. When she explained to him about her class and the living organisms, he called Jared to verify. Jared shrugged. How would he know when her organisms came in? He didn’t use living organisms in any of his classes, so he had no direct knowledge.

Jared had always been so good about deflecting that way, referring back to the appropriate source…her, in this case. Why did he suddenly decide to interfere in this one thing? Something he had less call to know than what day her organisms came in, since he had received her organisms a couple of times when she hadn’t been there to pick them up. Not that she expected him to remember that, and she was glad when he sent Gordon back to her. Now he…she stared at her grading, trying to remember where she left off.

“Hey, Carmen.” It was Jared. “I…something’s wrong.”

“Damn it, Jared, why did you do that? Why didn’t you send him to me, like you usually do?”

“I thought…I was…I wanted to help. I didn’t want you in over your head.”

“And you assumed I would be. Thanks a lot. Friend.” She turned her back and marked the next three questions wrong, though only one of them was wrong. She forced herself to pay attention, and fixed the bad grading. It wasn’t the fault of the student that the men in this place needed to tell the women what to do…she had several years more education and more experience than Jared…and Gordon had absolutely no experience in her field, and in fact, his educational background lagged behind every faculty member he was supervising. And he hated women. Two thirds of his faculty, and he hated them.

It was an hour past her time when Carmen turned off her light and locked her door. She was exhausted. She needed to get to bed, but it was going to be hard to sleep. Every time she figured out a way to deal with the crap at work, they dumped a new pile on her. She needed out. Too bad there were so few faculty jobs, and even fewer for a woman in her fifties. Experience wasn’t valued anymore. Most of the people they hired were under thirty. What she heard from friends in other places suggested it was the same everywhere.

Oh, shit. She forgot. She trudged back to her office and booted up her computer. Better get that email out while I’m thinking about it, she thought. She avoided saying what she really thought. She just sent a quick note to Jeannie telling her she needed a desk copy of the book they were using in Structure and Function. Now she could go home and rest.