Making Ends Meet

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I am 6th year PhD student in the department of English at UIC. I work the equivalent of two full-time
jobs. But I can’t make ends meet.

When I began my PhD work here, I had already obtained a master’s degree – so I was no stranger to the rigors of academic work. It came as no surprise when a colleague of mine calculated that based upon the average reading load per semester and the average number of minutes it takes to read a page of academic prose, just the act of reading in our program was a 40/week job (38.8 hours/week of assigned reading). I would expect no less of graduate school.

In addition to this work, however, as a condition of my enrollment, I was also teaching 2 sections of composition. As comp is required for all UIC undergraduates, these courses usually fill to max capacity – 23 students. The First-Year Writing Program requires that these students complete four writing projects totaling 20 pages of finished work by the end of the semester. Each writing project must go through at least two drafts. Putting my rusty math skills to use: 2 x 23 x 20 x 2 = 1,840 pages of
freshman writing to be read, evaluated, and constructively commented upon per semester, in addition to
my 40 hours a week of assigned reading. I haven’t even factored in yet the time spent in the classroom
(both attending class and teaching it); working on, writing my own research; and applying for grants or
to conferences and publications. I won’t even mention time for pesky things like friends, family, and
exercise.

But again, I didn’t enter academia in order to pursue a life of leisure. Quite the contrary, my teaching
has been a huge source of fulfillment for me, and has informed my scholarship in ways I could never
have predicted. My problem is not that I have to work hard. My problem is that, while it ought to be
clear that I am working the equivalent of two full-time jobs, I still can’t make ends meet.

According to the cost of living calculator on UIC’s Financial Aid webpage, the cost of living in
Chicago for 2012-2013 is $17, 958. (It is worth mentioning that many other independent assessments
set this figure significantly higher.) Currently, I am paid $15, 500. Every year I am forced to choose
between taking on outside work (with the effect of slowing down my progress toward degree, and
extending my indentured servitude), or taking out loans and falling further into debt. Besides the
situation being untenable, it is unconscionable of UIC to tell its graduate students (who, by the way,
teach over one third of all undergraduate students) that despite all the hard work they do, they don’t
deserve a living wage. UIC calls itself a world class university. But, when it comes to employee
compensation, benefits, and working conditions, UIC is anything but world class.

Kevin Carey

Campus Care Gave Me A Choice: Death or Medical Debt.

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By: Karen Cralli, Teaching Assistant (Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies)

For my 26th birthday, Campus Care gave me a choice: death or medical debt.

I suffer from a rare, life-threatening blood disorder called thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP). Left untreated, TTP claims a 95% mortality rate. With treatment, the survival rate is roughly 80%, though a significant number of patients experience multiple relapses. The only known treatment for TTP is plasmapheresis (plasma exchange): a patient’s plasma is removed and replaced with a donor’s plasma. Each plasma exchange at UIC’s Blood Donor and Hemotherapy Center costs $7,000: $5,000 for plasma, and $2,000 for labor and equipment.  There is no telling how many plasma exchanges a patient may need before his/her platelet count stabilizes. Patients like myself, who have experienced two or more relapses, are encouraged to take an FDA-approved immunosuppressant drug called Rituxan, which has been shown to reduce relapse rates from 40-60% to 10%. For someone like me who has relapsed twice in less than 8 months, Rituxan is a miracle drug. Four doses of Rituxan (the recommended course of treatment for TTP) plus the cost of labor and equipment total $60,000 at UIC’s Oncology Clinic.

My third TTP episode began in late September, three weeks before my 26th birthday. Until age 26, I had been on my parents’ insurance plans, which always covered treatment for my disorder. Coverage through my parents’ insurance was set to lapse at the end of my birth month, meaning Campus Care would become my only insurance provider mid-way through my relapse. Though each TTP relapse is considered a life-threatening medical emergency, Campus Care does not cover the use of any blood products or biological sera on an outpatient basis, nor does it cover monoclonal antibodies like Rituxan. I receive the majority of my medical care on an outpatient basis; I am only treated as an inpatient until I am no longer at risk of bleeding to death from a small cut. Campus Care does not cover the majority of medically necessary, life-sustaining treatment for my blood disorder.

When Campus Care put me in a position to choose between death and debt, I chose debt. No one should ever be forced to make that choice—especially not a TA or GA who earns less than $20,000 a year, and pays more than $1,000 a year for Campus Care.

To date, I have received over $80,000 worth of blood products, medication, and medical services not covered by Campus Care. Graduate employees deserve the same choices as other UIC employees—we should have the option to enroll in an insurance plan that won’t force us to choose between debt and death.

What It’s Like to be a Mom in Grad School

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By: Molly McGown

Editor’s Note: This week’s post is by guest blogger Molly McGown of UIC’s Anthropology program. Molly’s post is the first in a “What It’s Like” series we will be running in which members describe their experiences. Molly identifies some of the ways that graduate programs fail to adequately accommodate parents in our roles as students. Her thoughts dovetail nicely with this recent post from the Chronicle of Higher Education: “Singing the Grad School Baby Blues.” Look for our upcoming post in which we’ll explore some of the guarantees that our contract secures for parents who are grad employees, and we’ll think about ways that those guarantees could be improved.

You may call it oversensitivity or mother’s guilt. You may call it whatever you want, but grad school is set up in such a way that it is discriminatory. Despite the fact that your liberal department has expressed that they “accommodate” students-as-parents, what they really mean is that as long as your family doesn’t come before your schoolwork, they will smile at your child and tolerate him/her spending a few days a semester in your office.

As I began grad school, I looked at my schedule. I had two long days of core courses, but it looked like the rest of the week was free. That “free” time soon filled up with teaching responsibilities, so that I was at school from 9 to 5 about 5 days a week. My one-year old was breastfed. At least, that was true when I was home, but it became less and less possible as the responsibilities piled on. I couldn’t pump. I had spaces offered up for pumping, but on class days, my classmates and I were in the same classroom from 10 to 4. We were supposed to have 10 minutes between classes, but they always went over. I brought a pump every day, but it hardly went to use. When would it have been appropriate for me to leave and pump? If I left class at the specified time, I would have had 10 minutes to get set up, relax, and pump. Relax. “Hey, guys, I’ve got to slip out for a bit.” I’m not a particularly modest gal, but neither did I want to draw attention to the fact that I was going to attach a ridiculous plastic contraption to my milky parts. With that start, I would shut myself in an unfamiliar room and skip lunch in order to relax, all the while thinking about what I might be missing or how I would be judged for my “progress” in the course. Re-freaking-lax.

As you all know, schoolwork follows you home. Since becoming a grad student, I probably have spent 30-something hours at school, away from my son, and another 80-something at home with him. Many of those 80-something are spent supervising but mostly ignoring him while I read, write, and clean. I am barely able to keep up on my coursework. If I take a day off for the museum or a park day, I have to skimp on meals or sleep to make up that time. I have to pay for babysitters any time there is a conference or defense that I’m expected to be at, and this money comes from my measly stipend. Of course it was my choice to have a baby before grad school, but I wonder if the expectations of grad students are simply too high to begin with.