Thank you for reading, Willow. I would not recommend the position of adjunct to anyone who hopes to make academia their career. It's fine for retired professors or second-career folks who can take it or leave it, because that's often what happens with adjuncts. A one-semester contract is no guarantee. (And provides no benefits as far as I know.)

I wish I had a better response for your larger question, what are we supposed to do? There are ways to teach online, but I can't imagine that it is as satisfying as standing in a classroom with living, breathing human beings and participating in their discussion. Online teaching during Covid, and last semester for me when Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville, NC, was a shadow of what in-person instruction is.

Depending on your discipline and mobility, I might recommend something more local or more bespoke, or both: a community college or a start-up, counter-cultural school that's committed to its instructors as well as its students. If you hear administrators intone a kind of corporate-speak about "curricular agility" and "diversified pedagogies" and "program review" and "student demand," run. While all of those things make perfectly good sense, they enshrine students as consumers and faculty as exploitable gig-workers.

I wish you the very best in your future. Thank you for reading and responding.