Written by Laura Paciorek.
This past Spring, and part of Summer, I was invited to work on a project for the Learning Agency: a digital peer-reviewed publication called Adjunctification. On the surface, I’d be doing mostly technology-related work with a bit of light design. In reality, I would be having some hard fun while supporting a publication that gives space to issues I have lived first-hand.
Project Mechanics
When I first started the project, Adjunctification was in Ghost. I had never used Ghost, so I was excited to learn a new tool. Soon, the conversation turned to moving the content from Ghost to WordPress (in case there is a need for a Pressbooks integration at some point). I hadn’t used WordPress in over a decade. Initially, I was excited for this opportunity to push me back into the WordPress world. I was a bit nervous, too, because I had remembered WordPress being a learning curve and I was away from it for a long time.
Luckily, WordPress hadn’t changed too much. I researched WordPress themes and sent my recommendation report to the client. Rowling was chosen. After working on the aesthetics and basic layout, I had to figure out how to make the posts show up with images in the appropriate areas of the WordPress site by using categories. It couldn’t look like a blog, even though WordPress acts like one. To accomplish this, I thought like a WordPress site. I looked up how to generate links for unpublished draft posts so that authors could review their manuscripts prior to publication without needing a login. I learned that there’s a plugin for that called “Public Post Preview.” Everything worked well.
In addition to my design work, I also did other tasks that dipped into the side of me that is an English Writing, Rhetoric, and Technology major. I loved the editing process as much as the design work. Here are some additional tasks I took on:
- I prepared reports for the Adjunctification co-editors-in-chief.
- I designed an icon based upon the existing logo (my first time using Adobe Photoshop!).
- I researched the inner workings of online journals, such as submission services manuscript review.
- I formatted and edited articles.
- I updated American Psychological Association references.
- and more…
I also found a workaround for a headache of mine that was in the form of long uniform resource locators (URLs), that can’t be shortened into digital object identifiers (DOIs), that bleed into the WordPress sidebar after I click “publish.” I plan to continue to learn more about this issue and hope to find more ways to update and improve the site over time.
It was all hard fun!
Adjunctification, the Journal
Working on Adjunctification led me to revisit and learn new information about issues around contingent faculty. This was a great side benefit because I have experienced being an adjunct faculty member for decades. Beyond a few voices here and there, I never read anything so focused and in depth that was specifically about adjuncts as what I read in the Adjunctification articles.
From the Adjunctification WordPress site:
Adjunctification is a peer-reviewed journal by and for contingent faculty in higher education. While we publish any kind of research produced by non-tenure track faculty, including instructors, lecturers, adjuncts, research associates, etc., we are particularly interested in research that interrogates the vulnerability of these critical university workers.
Four articles now reside on the Adjunctification site. If you have any interest in this topic, they are enjoyable to read. After reading them, I gleaned new insights into the world of adjuncts.
Emily Wortman-Wunder reviews a Netflix drama called The Chair and finds adjunct faculty are absent from the show. Anthony Ballas writes about college composition courses, a topic dear to my heart because of my English writing studies. Christopher Beeson explains the term adjunctification as a cultural lens, which provides a deep look into the term, itself, and its implications. Turhan L. Potter, Ed.D., provides a check in on adjunct faculty and their non-work well-being with the hopes of helping adjunct faculty and their families. Adjuncts’ experiences are brought to life on these digital pages. My brief overviews are just that: brief. There’s much more to learn from these authors.
This is just volume 1, issue 1! Adjunctification aims to publish manuscripts once per year. I can’t wait for the next set of articles and more hard fun.
Hard Fun
In the opening sentences, I called my internship hard fun. Here is a short excerpt from Dr. Seymour Papert about this concept:
A teacher heard one child using these words to describe the computer work: “It’s fun. It’s hard. It’s Logo.” I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard. Once I was alerted to the concept of “hard fun” I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. But they have to be the right things matched to the individual and to the culture of the times.
I could probably explain my experience with the Adjunctification project in a similar way: “It’s fun. It’s hard. It’s WordPress design.” This project matched who I was on a number of levels and challenged me in new ways as an intern. I hope to continue on with the project this academic year.
