The Genome and the Adjunct
by Lee Shainen
I’M NOT STUPID. However, I admit to being somewhat mathematically
challenged. My first algebra class was in 1967. I was distracted.
It was not the best of times for learning math. For years,
I blamed “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll” for my ineptitude,
but maybe I just didn’t have the math aptitude, or, more likely,
I cut class to avoid the stress of not knowing what was going
on.
We live in an era where age-old questions regarding the influences
of heredity and environment are being sorted out in laboratories
by scientists studying the human genome. My life mate, Susan
Jo, a computer scientist who has worked on the Human Genome
Project for close to ten years, keeps me more informed than
I would “naturally” be. I also read. The best book, by far,
that we have come across on the subject is Matt Ridley’s Genome:
The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. Ridley’s
synthesis inspired the theory I am about to espouse. He doesn’t
know about it. However, I promise you that I will have Susan
Jo proofread this piece, and if she says I’m debasing the
tenets of research and science, I will recant.
On chromosome 10, there is a gene called CYP17 that makes
an enzyme that allows the body to convert cholesterol into,
among other things, cortisol. Stress seems to increase the
flow of cortisol through the body. In normal amounts, cortisol
is an important hormone that integrates mind and body functions.
In large amounts – in other words, when we are stressed – it suppresses
the immune system. Ridley talks about a troop of baboons (genetically
speaking, 94 percent similar to us) in East Africa whose cortisol
levels have been monitored. When young males tried to join
a new troop, their behavior became more aggressive, their
cortisol and testosterone levels rose, while their lymphocyte
(white blood cells) and high-density lipoprotein (“good” cholesterol)
counts fell. The baboons, in trying to find a place in a society
that was not welcoming, became more susceptible to infection
and coronary artery disease.
Are you wondering if I’m going to compare these baboons with
adjuncts trying to find their niche in academia? One could,
I imagine. But perhaps it would be more convincing if there
were some studies with humans? How about the British civil
servants in Whitehall who seemed to be getting heart disease
in proportion to their perception of where they stood in the
bureaucratic chain of command? Allow me to let Ridley himself
make this assertion. “In a massive, long-term study of 17,000
civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged:
the status of a person’s job was more able to predict their
likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking, or high
blood pressure.” If you’re wondering if these same results
have been reproduced elsewhere, get this: a study of a million
employees of the Bell Telephone Company in the 1960s produced
the same results.
Hello! That means that everything we have been bombarded
with regarding cholesterol and diet, blood pressure and smoking,
life-style and type A personalities as the key factors in
heart disease are really all secondary to how much we are
getting paid and our relative status at the institutions where
we work. In other words, being an adjunct today might simply
be the most hazardous choice one could make, not just for
one’s career, but for one’s very life!
A follow-up to the Whitehall study on the effects of privatization
on a department of the civil service, in the 1990s, showed
how the loss of job security led to more stress-related illnesses.
How many adjuncts do you know who feel secure about their
jobs? Is it ironic or something more sinister that the employee
group most likely to need health insurance is the one least
likely to have it? So, what’s it all about? Simply put: control.
If you’re the low person in the pecking order when it comes
to class assignments, you have little control. If your class
can be cancelled at the last minute or taken over by a full-timer,
you have little control. When your perception is that your
life is at the mercy of external factors, you will most likely
experience more stress, produce more cortisol, suffer from
a suppressed immune system, and be more prone to heart disease.
That’s just the way it is.
It’s not in my nature to end on such a downbeat, so I will
offer this: the key is in how you perceive things. If you
can convince yourself that doing important, satisfying work
is compensation enough, if you can believe that the vagaries
and uncertainties of future work keep you sharp and young
at heart, you should have no problem. Teach on. If these tricks
of the mind don’t work, you might consider doing what I did
when it came time for me to take calculus – I got the hell out
of there!
