The Confidence Game/Grifter U

When I was younger, I gave a guy a ride and ended up being conned out of my last 20 bucks. My naiveté made me an easy mark. He was not, as I thought, going into the convenience store to cash a check and then give me 30 dollars back. I know, I was an idiot and still feel stupid on that one. On an unrelated note, I left grad school sitting pretty, only 12,000 dollars in debt in 1990s money.

A friend of mine teaches at my ol’ alma matter, but only two classes a semester so they don’t have to hire him full time. It’s not nearly enough for him to live on, but he does get health insurance and it’s great for the university. Another way universities make money is by having graduate students teach courses. The graduate gets paid some ridiculously low percentage, like ten percent of what a professor would make for teaching the same class; students pay the full price for said class, and the university pockets the difference. The ethics of the educated class are something to see up close. Very practical.

Graduate students put up with this grift system (I also tried the word bullshit here) because they want to teach and tell themselves they are lucky for the opportunity – at least I did. It is the only way to get ahead, to build the experience necessary to get a job.

I had one professor take it to a higher level of exploitation, and I love him for it. In the spring of 1997, I registered to assist a professor in teaching an introduction to literature class. I was paying to shadow a professor teaching a class. This would count towards graduation.

We knew each other – I had taken classes with him and always did well. I always do well in school, well, in anything but math. Reading and writing were, are, and always will be something I am passionate about. When I met with him to talk about the course, he asked me, “Do you want to teach it?”

Without hesitation, I answered as confidently as only the naïve can, “Yes, yes, I do.” Confidence is critical in any con, and I was more than willing to be in on this one.

Let’s pause here and set this up clearly: More than 30 students are paying a full fare to take an introduction to literature course with a tenured full professor. One graduate student, me, is paying the college for the chance to watch and maybe assist this qualified professor. The college is paying the professor’s full salary to teach this class.

And I teach the class. That m#therf&cker owes me some money!

To be honest, it was great. Adjuncts, non-full-time teachers, are the majority of teachers in colleges and universities, rarely get to teach the juicy stuff. Adjuncts and newbies get the ENGL 101s because most tenured faculty don’t want to waste time teaching the basics. Yes, the least experienced teachers often teach the most important writing class an undergraduate student will ever take. Practical ethics, baby!

Luckily, even from day one, I was an awesome teacher. If I remember correctly, I taught a perfect semester. Actually, I only remember a few things:

1.)    I had students write journals about what they read; I read them all and used their comments to start the next day’s discussion. I was a newbie, not a moron.

2.)    My professor had a recliner and a kitchen timer in his office. He told me that taking a ten-minute nap during the day is a great way to stay sharp. He was an intelligent man.

3.)    I was really nervous; the professor sat in the back of the room, and after each class, we sat and talked about how it went.

If you ever talked to someone with more than one degree (I have one undergraduate and two masters), we can justify anything. The professor was, technically, in the classroom. He did keep an eye on what was going on and, theoretically, would have stepped in if I did a lousy job. All old instructors start as new instructors, and the training must happen somewhere.

Sidenote: I loved the classes I took with him, and he was an incredible, award-winning, teacher - thoughtful, engaging, knowledgeable, and open to all his students. He even tried to help me out years later when the state university system we both worked for did not want to give me any credit, which would raise my pay, for my second master’s degree. It didn’t work, and I lost the appeal, but his help was real.

When you teach English long enough, you learn the patterns of discussion and how stories work: what goes into the structure, how themes appear, etc. So, he told me about the time he bet his fellow academic that could lead a classroom discussion on a story he did not read. I couldn’t do that then, but after 20 years, I could do it now.

How it would work:

He would ask, “Lisa, tell me who your favorite character was and why?”

Lisa answers.

He follows up with, “Yes, and what would you say was the biggest challenge faced by this character?”

Lisa answers.

Now, he moves on to another student, “Ah, yes, and you, Amil, is that struggle representative of the story’s overall theme, or do you think there is another struggle characters have to face?”

Bam! The conversation is off, and you can learn everything you need about the story from the students.

What am I trying to say? I will tell you:

1.       Grifting takes skills.

2.       Grifting is done on many levels and in many places.

3.       It’s not called grifting if you give the marks diplomas at the end.