Job security

Even though I've been teaching at PSU for over a decade now, I'm on an annual renewable contract (adjunct faculty), so theoretically I can be replaced at any moment. In fact, a few years ago a retired Hollywood writer settling down here lobbied hard to get my job. He failed. But he did get a job teaching sitcom writing, which is what he did anyway.

So now and again I get nervous about the next year, as I felt recently. It's getting close to ordering books time for fall -- and I hadn't heard about the fall schedule. So I asked in the dept office today and was told it was all settled, listed right there on the bulletin board. What!? Well, there I was on the list, scheduled to teach. You fill out a schedule form for this, so apparently I filled one out some time back and then totally forgot about it! A senior moment or something. I couldn't be scheduled without agreeing to teach, so I must have filled out the next year's schedule and then blanked it out. So the recent worry was for nothing.

I'm going to revamp my syllabus again. I used the same syllabus all three terms this year, a first! I'm going to change several things:

• For a midterm, I'm going to show a movie and have them write about its dramatic structure
• I'm going to add Manhattan as a film we watch -- it's just so damn good.
• I'm going to stick with Sideways as the screenplay we study. I'd use something else by Alexander Payne - Jim Taylor if I could, like Citizen Ruth, but the scripts aren't published.
• I'm going to keep Casablanca as a film we watch but cut reading the script as well.
• I'm going to cut the Poetics for Screenwriters book and pass out one chapter from it instead. Or maybe not.
• I'm going to use the Mamet paradigm graphic I created more centrally.

So....I need to think this through soon so I can order my books by May 15th. Changing the syllabus does keep me on my toes.