Saturday, July 14, 2012

Awright Forktwads! You wanna know what proffies do with their time? Here’s a breakdown for ya.



Recent authors have questioned the time commitments involved in the typical tenure-stream faculty position.  In the spirit of collegial inquiry, I offer the following monthly time budget based on my personal experiences in the Department of Hamster Husbandry at the University of Tuktoyaktuk. 

You’re welcome.  

Activity
Time per month
Teaching a class I’ve taught before
12 hrs
Prepping for a class I’ve taught before
6 hrs
Teaching a new course I haven’t taught before
12 hrs
Prepping for the new course I haven’t taught before
24 hrs
Attempting to get my ‘team teaching’ colleagues to deliver on their commitments to the course I (we) haven’t taught before
10 hrs
Apologizing profusely to the dean for attempting to get my colleagues to deliver on their commitments being rude and aggressive.
0.75 hrs
Doing the work my colleagues committed to, but didn’t do.
16 hrs
Swearing at Uploading course materials to BlackHole Board
6 hrs
Grading
8 hrs
Listening to complaints, about grading
8 hrs
Conducting laboratory research on hamster husbandry
24 hrs
Analyzing, writing presenting research
20 hrs
Keeping up on the literature. (or in other words, actually reading all those academic papers that everyone is so certain that nobody ever reads.)
24 hrs
Figuring out correct format to upload resulting paper to conference/journal website
2 hrs


Reading rejection letter from journal.
3 min
Filling out federally mandated paperwork to document that our hamster holding facility has better air quality than my office
4 hrs
Pleading with maintenance to fix the air supply to the hamster holding facility so it doesn’t get shut down by the federal animal care committee (and not coincidentally, so the hamsters don’t actually go tits up).
5 hrs
Going to the hardware store to obtain the necessary parts and then installing them to fix the goddamn hamster holding facility air supply myself.
5 hrs
Apologizing profusely to the head of maintenance for fixing the goddamn air supply acting outside of my authority.
0.5 hrs
Listening to obnoxious lab supply sales rep try to sell me on new and improved latex gloves
1 hr
Listening to the obnoxious textbook publisher rep try to sell me on new and improved edition of the textbook (now with cartoons!)
1 hr
Filling out requisitions for textbooks/latex gloves etc and re-imbursement forms for parts for hamster holding facility.
2 hrs
Tracking down requisitions that someone in admin misplaced
1 hr
Sitting in committee meetings to plan Happy Hamster Days High School outreach program
3 hrs
Redesigning poster advertising Happy Hamster Daze, because it didn’t use the official Tuk U. colours
1 hr
Painstakingly brokering consensus on new Hamster Husbandry curriculum to meet new accreditation requirements (now with Bloom’s verbs!)
16 hrs
Filling out paperwork to submit to registrar’s office to implement new Hamster Husbandry curriculum to meet new accreditation requirements
8 hrs
Rewriting all syllabi in the department to accommodate recent discovery of obscure formatting regulation by new administrative assistant in Registrar’s office.
6 hrs
Posting all syllabi on departmental website
1 hr
Browbeating Reminding colleagues to submit their syllabi to be posted on the departmental website
2 hrs
Apologizing profusely for reminding colleagues to submit their syllabi being un-collegial (to department chair this time)
0.25 hrs
Watching carefully brokered new Hamster Husbandry curriculum and syllabi wiped out by administrative fiat.
47.3 seconds.


Filling out annual reports carefully accounting for all of the above because admin wants to know: “What have you done for me LATELY?”
3 hrs


Grand Total:
232 hrs
33 min
47.3 sec.

Being called a lazy asshole by a jackoff with a think-tank sinecure… Just Mothra-fracking priceless!

There are some people who will just never get it.

For everything else, there’s alcohol.



5 comments:

  1. Well said. Although I spend more like eight hours a week, rather than a month, grading.

    My general reaction to the sinecure-holding whiners is "yeah ya know what? There are some jobs that don't break down hourly. So, yeah, once in a while I get a day off in the middle of the week without much to do. Some months, on the other hand, I don't get weekends. And you know what I drive? I'll give you a hint: it's small and Japanese. So STFU about how much I work and polish your Lexus, Skeeter."

    And next time something breaks in my office, I'm taking a page from your book and going to the hardware store. It's faster to apologize than request maintenance.

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  2. I'm waiting for the first administration to order retroactive syllabus format changes. Best guess is sometime next year, at an institution undergoing accreditation review....

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  3. I hadn't seen the Canadian whining. How many people with a degree in English literature think Moby-Dick was written by an English author?

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  4. Sounds about right to me. My job involves much more teaching and much less service/administration, but that just means I spend proportionately more time grading, responding to complaints about grading, swearing at BlackHole Board, and, yes, creating syllabi and other curricular materials that seem to be aimed more at an audience of accreditors/assessors (and/or administrators nervous about accreditation/assessment) than at students.

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  5. Cassandra wrote: "and, yes, creating syllabi and other curricular materials that seem to be aimed more at an audience of accreditors/assessors (and/or administrators nervous about accreditation/assessment) than at students."

    Amen, sister!

    ReplyDelete

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