Insanity in the work place
Among the insane: myself and my newly hired colleague.
My insanity lies in ageeing to take on some administrative duties (which are supposed to take up about 1/3 of my time). The last time I agreed to this (year 2001), it was because the then current administrator was doing a terrible job. I figured it had to be less stressful to do it myself. I quickly discovered that mid-level administrators have a habit of dumping all their random unfunded mandates onto the plates of lower-level administrators. "Oh, by the way, so-and-so wants a program rationalization for the biology department by the end of the week. Take care of that, would you?"
So when I got pregnant (year 2004), I quit administration to reduce my stress level. A senior, experienced, tenured faculty member agreed to take over the job. I thought lower-level adminstration was in good hands. Alas, my senior colleague did very little in the way of administering our program. Some of the things my colleague did not do inlcude scheduling classes (rather important) and holding program meetings. So when the mid-level administrator asked me to take the lower-level job again, I agreed on the condition that I would not comply with any unfunded mandates. I am sticking strictly to the job description ... supposedly. We'll see.
I spent a fair part of my summer stressing out trying to hire a new faculty member at the last minute. (My original plan had been to write a journal article and also relax a little. Oh, well.) At least we've hired someone, that has to be good, right? (Well, maybe.) When Mid-level administrator heard that the book for New faculty member's class hadn't arrived in the bookstore, Mid-level asked me to check up on New and see if New needed any help. Since New is rarely in his office (hmmm, that's odd), I sent a brief email to New. Whereupon New asked why I was accusing him of not doing any work. Excuse me? I spent (read: wasted) 45 minutes of my life assuring and reassuring New that no one was accusing him of shirking; we just wanted to know if he needed any help with anything. ThenI spent another 45 minutes of my life helping New do his job, and afterwards New went to his office (at last). Then New wrote a long email to Mid-level complaining about being accused of not doing his job after classes had only been in session for 1.5 weeks, and based solely on rumors originating from unknown students. Excuse me?
God, please don't let New be insane.
My insanity lies in ageeing to take on some administrative duties (which are supposed to take up about 1/3 of my time). The last time I agreed to this (year 2001), it was because the then current administrator was doing a terrible job. I figured it had to be less stressful to do it myself. I quickly discovered that mid-level administrators have a habit of dumping all their random unfunded mandates onto the plates of lower-level administrators. "Oh, by the way, so-and-so wants a program rationalization for the biology department by the end of the week. Take care of that, would you?"
So when I got pregnant (year 2004), I quit administration to reduce my stress level. A senior, experienced, tenured faculty member agreed to take over the job. I thought lower-level adminstration was in good hands. Alas, my senior colleague did very little in the way of administering our program. Some of the things my colleague did not do inlcude scheduling classes (rather important) and holding program meetings. So when the mid-level administrator asked me to take the lower-level job again, I agreed on the condition that I would not comply with any unfunded mandates. I am sticking strictly to the job description ... supposedly. We'll see.
I spent a fair part of my summer stressing out trying to hire a new faculty member at the last minute. (My original plan had been to write a journal article and also relax a little. Oh, well.) At least we've hired someone, that has to be good, right? (Well, maybe.) When Mid-level administrator heard that the book for New faculty member's class hadn't arrived in the bookstore, Mid-level asked me to check up on New and see if New needed any help. Since New is rarely in his office (hmmm, that's odd), I sent a brief email to New. Whereupon New asked why I was accusing him of not doing any work. Excuse me? I spent (read: wasted) 45 minutes of my life assuring and reassuring New that no one was accusing him of shirking; we just wanted to know if he needed any help with anything. ThenI spent another 45 minutes of my life helping New do his job, and afterwards New went to his office (at last). Then New wrote a long email to Mid-level complaining about being accused of not doing his job after classes had only been in session for 1.5 weeks, and based solely on rumors originating from unknown students. Excuse me?
God, please don't let New be insane.
posted by MegS | 6:19 PM
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