Office Spaces

In a perfect world, I suppose I would never have an office--at least not one in a work space. Have an office, you have a place you're supposed to be, a phone you're expected to answer--in short, you cease to be a moving target. Day after day, I sit in my office and ask myself: why do people call me? Why do they come by?

Answer: There is something to be done. And my visitor or caller can either not do it, or doesn't know how to do it, or would rather I did it. And, quite frankly, I'm just as clueless and lazy as my visitor. Or caller.

So: to have an office, with working hours--not so good. It is the jealousy I have for my faculty, who teach their classes, meet with students as needed, go home at noon and take Fridays off. More than anything, it is the elusive nature of their professional lifestyle that has persuaded me to join them next year, when my term as Department Chair expires.

In essence I'm reverting back to graduate school, during which--if I didn't want to talk to anyone--I would pull my Irish tweed walking cap down over my eyes as I walked to class.

I came to my job through a couple of flukes. When I was hired in 1994, there were three other English teachers in the department: two women nearing retirement, neither of whom wanted the aggravation; and another woman, who had proved herself so manifestly incompetent for the job that I was the choice by default.

I was 29 years old. I was still in graduate school. When the Dean held her senior staff meeting I was the youngest person in the room by a dozen years. But I had an office--with a door that locked. And my own phone line. The ultimate prestige, right?

Or so I thought at the time. In eleven years doing essentially the same job, I've been in four offices. They are as follows:

1. The office on the second floor of my campus-in-the-mall, a windowless little number so completely out of the way for anyone that I wuld sometimes lay my swivel chair on its back, turn the lights off, lay down, use the back as a cushion for my head, and take a nap. Next door was cosmetology, and at night when I came home I could smell hair oil in my clothes.

2. An office I shared with the chair of Social Sciences, a not-bad work space save for two elements. First, there was a single phone and a single phone line, which meant that anyone could reach us, but we needed to take turns reaching anyone. Became a hassle during adjunct staffing, that two-day run-up when we figured which scheduled classes we would run and which not, then call up professionals with Master's Degrees and ask them to teach a class for ninety dollars per week. Second, the social sciences chair had a theory that fluorescent lighting caused brain cancer, and so she insisted we light our offices with lamps only. This office was windowless as well, with the result that, lamps or no, we spent our workday essentially in darkness. Still, she brought a TV, so all was forgiven, though our mornings required a rough compromise: she could watch "The View" from 10-11 and I could turn my radio to the Jim Rome Show.

3. The campus way out there. When our college expanded, we had some land grant or write-off or whatever place our campus in the middle of an industrial park. It was here we moved, with the hope that our student population would follow. Didn't happen, in part because no student live nearby. Meanwhile, one of the offerings of this campus are large windows facing west, so that in the afternoons, habitation is done at one's risk. The sun came in through the windows in Monetesque rectangles and the sunbeams burn the computer screens.

4. The classroom for nine people. Discussed here, a room with me with me in the middle, surrounded by collapsing cubicle walls and several dozen concentrations.

5. Starting at the end of next week: an office shared with the latest social sciences chair. This may be the best of all. Two desks, three-sided, with drawers and things rising to six feet high--high enough, once I claim the back desk, for me to hide behind, should I not want to talk to people. Fifteen more months, then no desk at all. And no phone. And try to find me on a Friday.