Here is a comment I really support:
“Part of being solid in a career is making those choices as to what you will and will not put up with. The thing that we all need to learn is to how to deal with it politically.”
I like it because it goes against what I was slowly and progressively taught after graduate school, that you should be able to put up with anything and also accomplish anything, in any circumstances.
I have been losing it all week because I cannot keep up with my unreasonable workload and think this is my fault, there should be some way to “manage time” such as to be able to be several people.
At different times I have given up various things, like research, for the sake of handling the language program wars, which are actually the one part of my workload which can and should be eliminated for once and for all.
It is to the advantage of the instructors that these wars continue and it is because of having been instructed to be kind to those who “have not had the chance to do a PhD” that I have not tried harder than I have to stop them.
This week I said in a meeting that I could no longer participate, and it felt wonderful. I was then asked why I had been so trenchant, why I would no longer kindly participate, and I said because I am tired of the sacrifice it represents for me, the students, the other research faculty, the university, the field and the profession.
I was heard but I feel terrible about having asserted myself over those who have not had the chance to do a PhD and who in terms of hours have slightly higher teaching loads than I do and make a little less. Our feeling is that they deserve every consideration and by asserting myself I betrayed policy here and also failed to sacrifice myself fully enough to the weaker person, which I of course believe to be a mortal sin (yes, that is an erroneous belief, but I believe it).
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They are the housewives of the department and they are married to the Fulls and the administrators; we the assistant and associate professors are the usurpers who have challenged the authority of the instructors, the administration and the Fulls; disobedience to an instructor, including a male instructor, is a special sin because instructors are the ones serving the Fulls and the administrators at home. At work therefore, they deserve to be the queens and it does not matter how many of us lose our jobs over it, since there are always more new PhDs coming.
That last paragraph, in a nutshell, is why not to work at a small school or a regional institution. And I would like to be more functional, have a more grown-up life, but it always seems one is asked to do penance in one way or another for having done that degree instead of let someone else do it.
Therefore we will repeat the quotation with which this post began:
“Part of being solid in a career is making those choices as to what you will and will not put up with. The thing that we all need to learn is to how to deal with it politically.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 