My Position Comes with Privilege: I’m Going to Learn How to Use It

Abstract

This composite nonfiction narrativizes the experiences of Daniel Meyers, an assistant professor of education. Specifically, it details his transition from a graduate program to working as a full-time tenure track faculty member at a public state university. Methodologically, this research relies on parallax as an important tool to understanding Meyers’s personal, intellectual, and political struggle in adjusting from a research institution to “performing” at a teaching institution. Teaching institutions, to Meyers, are significantly more customer service driven (read: making students happy) which can be problematic when faculty members have significant and different cultural understandings and interpretations than their students and the university as a whole. Meyers struggles to make adjustments, but ultimately realizes his duties as a teacher and that his contributions—though perceived alternative and conflicting with primary cultural and political narratives—provides him with an extraordinary and privileged opportunity to do important work.