Self Care Update: Freelancing, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and the myth of scarcity

Freelancing & Scholarship: Academia, R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and the myth of scarcity in the 21st Century

It is 6:02AM and I've been up since 3:30AM with a stomachache from celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary. My stomach is still super queasy from surviving an eating disorder in my 20s, and more recently due to the gastric ulcer & gastritis I developed when lupus started attacking my stomach. I'm also 36 and not as young as I used to be, and this combination of mitigating factors means that I just can't eat or drink like I used to or like others. C'est la vie.

Bear with me, I am going to connect all of this to the fraught disaster that is the current cocktail of higher education and neoliberalism, I promise. 

At first I thought I would just be stuck in the toilet for a few hours reading Kevin Kwan's China Rich Girlfriend (I'm enjoying his trilogy and learning more about pop culture from Singapore, Hong Kong, and China), but I realized that my dis-ease is also to a slew of emails I exchanged with parents in my music studio yesterday. The first clue was that I stopped reading my novel and started googling the phrase 'piano teacher respect'. I found these gems, which I immediately shared on FB and Twitter as public (my polite way of trying to get things out there to people who might need to read them):

1. RESPECT: https://franspianostudio.me/2017/09/06/respect/ 
2. 'Piano Lessons: More than a Commodity': https://pianodao.com/2017/03/03/piano-lessons-more-than-a-commodity/
3. 'An image crisis in independent piano teaching?': https://crosseyedpianist.com/2014/10/06/an-image-crisis-in-independent-piano-teaching/amp/ 

So I will begin by explaining what is happening in my studio, connect it to my plight as a well-educated intellectual in today's academic job market, and finish with some reflections from my personal situation and ideas I've had talking to others with alt-academic careers and ex-academics who have left the academy for the traditional (?) workforce.

Firstly, the above articles are brilliant because they synthesize a lot of my frustrations in my cap as a private music teacher.* The first article addresses the issue of respect and the cognitive dissonance between many parents' goals of music lessons, which may be to check off music lessons as something that their children need to do, rather than out of any real goal of learning or enhancing education. In the States, this is really crucial because music education is sorely lacking--and yet parents feel, I think, upset that they have to pay a professional for this service, when they can enroll their kids in a public school and not pay the teachers. (This is a gross oversimplification, obviously.) So while parents want their children to learn music, they don't really want to pay for it. I used to find this highly offensive, but I get it--money is tight, we try to cut corners whenever possible. I buy non-organic bananas because it's not really worth it when you have to peel off everything to get to the fruit anyway. But trying to compromise value on your child's education, well, that's a slippery slope into disrespect and it eats away at your relationship with the professional you've paid and entrusted with that education. From the post:

"Because they are paying for piano lessons as a service, some parents think they are entitled to behave in this way, because “the customer is always right”, and the piano teacher (“service provider”) should submit to the customer’s view/demands. These types of parents tend to be very demanding, requesting changes to lesson times at short notice, make-up lessons, and refunds. They are also often the first to complain if their child is not making progress, yet they may not be willing to support or encourage their child to practise between lessons. In short, they lack respect."

There's a lot more to add there, and the post goes into greater detail. 

The second link is great because it connects problems with respect in the relationships of private music teachers and parents to consumerist education models. The author defines the 'super consumer':

Building from this objective, the super-consumer believes:

1:  I am the customer. I am entitled. The customer is always right. Ergo, I am always right.

2:  The piano teacher is a service provider. Their job is to make sure that I am a happy customer by acquiescing to my every whim. They might try to rip me off, so it is sensible to doubt their integrity.

These attitudes have become seriously out of balance, overpowering super-consumer’s instinct for empathy, and any real sense they might have had for showing appreciation or generosity to others. There is very little regard for any of the other aspects of the teacher/pupil relationship.

This really hit home for me. One of my biggest struggles as a private music teacher, and a freelancer full stop, is boundaries. I have very little time for many things that I love in life: writing about music, scholarship, yoga, socializing with friends, live music, museum trips, etc. because of my teaching--especially the private music teaching--encroaching on my boundaries. Ever since taking my first piano pedagogy course in college in 2002, I have had studio policies to assert boundaries between the fraught relationship and dynamic of private music teacher/client. I say fraught because it is very nebulous--many times, I've befriended parents of my clients, and it pretty much gets ruined because in the end, I'm a professional and they are paying me for my profession. I can't make exceptions to my policy for everyone, or I'd burn out and not be any good at my job. Also, I've found that the moment I start making exceptions for one person, everyone wants it--and oftentimes they talk amongst themselves and demand an exception because they heard someone else had it. But as soon as I revised my policies significantly this year, I still have people asking me for exceptions: wanting to pay on a schedule that is completely on their terms and then being frustrated when I find it difficult to accommodate the extra admin. required by their asynchronous requests, perhaps not reading the policies at all and asking for special favours, lack of organisation, not bringing books to lessons, not returning the signed signature page by the deadline, etc. Obviously, I am accommodating and flexible and understand that parents deal with a lot and need some grace. But I'm a professional and an adult and at some point I just start to feel used and disrespected, and it grates on me. 

The final blog post is actually a survey of independent piano teachers, and reveals the startling cognitive dissonance amongst teachers themselves. The author's conclusions to the survey and the anonymous survey responses are illuminating:

"I am troubled by these largely negative comments and the recurrence of the word “hobby” in relation to piano teaching. The perception, expressed by teachers themselves, that the role is not valued nor regarded as a proper professional job is very evident in these responses. While the stereotypical view of the private piano teacher as a little old lady down the road is fading, there is a still a strong perception that the private piano teacher is doing the job for “pin money”, or because they can’t get a “better” job. I find this view deeply depressing: I take my job very seriously and adopt a professional attitude to every aspect of my work (the fact that I also enjoy it a great deal is an added bonus). How do we change this attitude into a positive perception of piano teachers as highly skilled and professional people? I believe that the impetus must come from within the profession, from piano teachers themselves, and from professional bodies such as EPTA and ISM, who should be actively promoting private piano teaching as a recognised and respected profession."

Well! If we can't agree amongst ourselves that we are highly skilled professionals who deserve to be paid for our services, then we have a prayer when it comes to communicating that to our clientele. This is the most frustrating thing that is happening in my studio, and it all boils down to money and disrespect. Here's a short list of recent infractions I've had to deal with, as a highly skilled, well-educated, yet empathetic professional educator. (Bear in mind, this is from adult humans with children, not the immature college students largely of the 18–22 age bracket that I deal with at universities, who are their own kettle of fish. Also bear in mind that I actually value and appreciate my students' parents, and write none of this out of remorse or anger, but mere frustration at my inability to perform my duties as an educator at my absolute top-notch capability because I am dealing with these issues.)

1. Parents not signing my studio policy or asking if they need to sign it. (Answer: yes. You won't resume lessons if you haven't signed it. We will just keep delaying their start, and yes, you will be required to pay tuition, as I'm keeping the spot for your children. Also, I know from experience that the only way to get them to read my policies is to make them sign the document.)
2. Parents asking for special dispensations for tuition or payment plans that don't exist on my studio policy. (Some of these parents have never paid on time, ever, because they've never before read my policies.)
3. Parents telling me that they can't pay me on time because they are freelancers and they don't know when they'll be paid. (Well, that's my problem, and if we keep putting up with that as freelancers, then the situation will never improve.)
4. Parents ignoring my cancellation policies and asking for last-minute makeup lessons.
5. Parents not telling me with 30-days written notice of terminating lessons and then wanting a refund on a deposit or of tuition.
6. Parents just not responding to my questions about summer lessons, not paying the tuition deposit to save their spot for the fall, and then demanding a first-rate lesson time and for me to travel to them without them paying the travel fees.
7. Parents putting me in the middle of an argument during a divorce because they haven't communicated scheduling. I don't want to be involved in any personal arguments, thank you very much. 
8. Parents not leaving when the lesson is over but trying to make the lesson run over time because they don't think it should be over yet.
9. Parents asking for extra time when they have dropped their children off late.
10. Parents getting upset that a student is scheduled right after their child, because they want extra time to chat with me or ask questions.
11. Parents obsessively counting the number of minutes in a lesson and wanting refunds for any unused minutes, as if the lesson time in person is a complete picture of what they pay me for.
12. Parents asking me questions that are clearly in my policy, demonstrating that they haven't, in fact, read it.

OK, so what does this all have to do with higher education and the plight of neoliberalism?

The truth is, the list above could easily be substituted for students in higher education, and for demands that academics receive from higher education administrators. I'll rephrase it for you in those terms:

1. Parents not following policies and not agreeing to policies = students not reading or following a syllabus
2. Parents asking for special dispensations for tuition or payment plans that don't exist on my studio policy. = Students asking for special favours with regards to a syllabus and assignment deadlines without discussing why they need these accommodations (like, parents ask me for special dispensations for tuition but live in multimillion dollar houses. No-one shows me proof of income to show that they are struggling. They just want it. Like students who don't have a disability and don't need an accommodation, but just want it.)
3. Parents telling me that they can't pay me on time because they are freelancers and they don't know when they'll be paid. = Ditto above, or students who struggle to pass class because they are forced to work extra hard to pay for tuition and then want special dispensation.
4. Parents ignoring my cancellation policies and asking for last-minute makeup lessons. = Students who ignore my syllabus and then want special makeup exams.
5. Parents not telling me with 30-days written notice of terminating lessons. = Students not attending class and wanting an A.
6. Parents just not responding to my questions about summer lessons, not paying the tuition deposit to save their spot for the fall, and then demanding a first-rate lesson time and for me to travel to them without them paying the travel fees. = Students ignoring me when I am trying to help them because I can see that they are struggling, and then get mad at me and claim that I never did anything to help them or weren't a good teacher by virtue of their failing the class.
7. Parents putting me in the middle of an argument during a divorce because they haven't communicated scheduling. I don't want to be involved in any personal arguments, thank you very much. = Students sharing ridiculous TMI with me as an excuse to get out of an assignment or to get special favours. 
8. Parents not leaving when the lesson is over but trying to make the lesson run over time because they don't think it should be over yet. = Students using up my office hours or demanding to speak before or after class for special help when they just basically want me to do their assignment for them and don't understand that some of this work needs to be done on their own.
9. Parents asking for extra time when they have dropped their children off late. = Students wanting me to ignore their constant late arrivals to class.
10. Parents getting upset that a student is scheduled right after their child, because they want extra time to chat with me or ask questions. = Students who don't respect my office hours and want me to be available for them whenever they need my help.
11. Parents obsessively counting the number of minutes in a lesson and wanting refunds for any unused minutes, as if the lesson time in person is a complete picture of what they pay me for. = Students obsessively counting the minutes of a class that they think are being used wisely or unwisely and then writing about it in a course evaluation.
12. Parents asking me questions that are clearly in my policy, demonstrating that they haven't, in fact, read it. = Students not reading my syllabus and then missing crucial items and blaming me for not telling them when it is, in fact, in my syllabus.

There are many more parallels I could recount here, like when parents are critical of my teaching, but then it turns out they aren't actually following my assignments and their children aren't practicing with supervision (most children need supervision to actually benefit from practicing!)--this is a lot like the students who don't complete assignments and then are shocked when they fail exams or don't get good grades in a class. The point is, the problems of neoliberal, consumerist education (and I know I haven't properly defined what I mean by that, but well this is a blog post written between 6:02–7:02AM and I don't have time to write my magnum academic opus right now--let's just think BETSY DEVOS) creep into education EVERYWHERE, and devalue and circumvent and diminish and devour any actual, real learning. And they make the teacher's job soooooo much harder, and less rewarding, and more frustrating. And it's the same in universities as in private schools or private studios. Parents and university students are now paying for their education full stop, and paying a lot. The average private school tuition in Brooklyn is $35,000 FOR PRE-K. It keeps going up and up for elementary school and higher. University education is expensive in the States and has been for decades, and is getting more competitive, and universities are tightening their belts and eliminating tenure-track jobs and hiring more and more adjuncts. Academia and the job market is the myth of scarcity ratcheted up 10000% percent. 

The difference is that in private music teaching, I fight even harder to legitimize and professionalize myself. I've had parents say to me that it doesn't matter what degrees I have, just that their children like me. I've had other parents say to me that providing for a child's education shouldn't be expensive, so I shouldn't ask for too much. And with the increasing vacations and the lack of work during the summer--I made just enough to pay my rent and mortgage but not enough to live on, so my credit-card debt is still at $39,000 [this is also because I had to pay for my PhD on credit cards--don't ask, it's a long story, trust me I didn't want to but it was unavoidable], as a freelancer it is really hard NOT to ignore the myth of scarcity. I need to survive, too. The consequence is that I take on way too much work and get burned out and then find myself just looking forward to the rat race of the academic year so I know I'll at least have some sort of paycheck. And I get burnt out and find myself agreeing to the most preposterous, degrading requests from families, so I know that I will have some sort of income soon, which is especially important when my husband doesn't have a job...

The point is, as educators, we are getting the short shrift in this economy. We all know it, and yet we keep taking it. Because we love what we do, and it's easier to take advantage of someone who loves what they do. Obviously, there are many other reasons--as an academic, I was trained to work 7 days a week, 12–16 hours a day, most of it completely for free. I write scholarly articles and review books without any expectation of payment, because I love learning and I want to further education. But I have to put food on the table, and this is my profession, and if I want to keep on going--I have to keep on with my boundaries. So this means politely saying no and refusing clients who don't want to respect my boundaries. And knowing that my self-respect and self-worth are priceless, especially if I don't feel respected otherwise. 

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* (If you know me IRL, then you know I wear a lot of hats. I am a musicologist and an adjunct professor, I am a private music teacher and run my own music studio, and I am a yoga teacher. I keep up a writing and research profile, too, and I'm an advocate for disabled scholars, and in the past served as chair of the American Musicological Society's Study Group on Music and Disability.)