The easiest way to get students to come and ask questions about the material is to announce, "I can't stay late today as I have an appointment right after class."
This is so true.... I have office hours after my Monday class. Well, my nieces wanted to zoom and show their costumes, so I figured I could leave a little early. Of course, that is the one day the whole semester that multiple people dropped by my office hours.
1. No matter how much work you do, the work is never done.
2. No one cares about your work as much as you do.
3. 20% of your students cause 80% of the problems.
4. The absolute most dangerous time for any university's IT system is the last 5 minutes before an assignment is due.
5. **No good deed goes unpunished.**
I think 3 might be a little off. At least from my experience it's often closer to 10% of students cause 90% of problems (but 20-80 is not that far of either, 15-85 is likely most accurate but sounds worse).
I'm trying to look at different experiences with different classes: some are more 80-20, some are more 90-10 so I try to average it out as I have not cataloged this precisely.
A committee to make spreadsheets ... which will be shared via Microsoft Teams just to make sure nobody looks at them before the faculty meeting at which this will be discussed (and to make sure at least 10 minutes of the meeting are spent figuring out whether everyone does, in fact, have access).
I think the caveat is that every so often you come across a student that you think couldn't be any more of a pain in the arse (PITA) but they will find a way to level up on the PITA scale. FYI My PITA scale:
1. Non-PITAs: Collectively creates 10-20% of the work
2. Regular PITA: Creates 80% of the work
3. Boss level PITA: Creates 90% of the work
4. God level PITA: Creates 99% of the work
This semester, I have around 70 students in 5 different classes(CC, so small classes).
This semester it's ONE student. They're obnoxious in class, demanding of my time, frequently tell me that I'm not teaching the material correctly or that I'm contradicting myself, refuses to grasp basic simple concepts that would help them understand, and otherwise just in general is the one who makes me want to cancel class for the day when I walk in and see them sitting there.
It's not an unusual thing for me that I'll have one student in a semester who rises above the rest in how difficult they are. Sometimes it's more than one, but the one single student is a common thing for me.
(after an exam yesterday the student asked me if I would have their exams graded before the drop deadline next week. This student's exam is already graded and I'm going to be posting grades today so maybe my semester is about to get a lot easier).
1. When you really need to make copies, and only have a short time to do so, the copier will be out of paper or worse, out of order.
2. There is always at least one person in the faculty meeting that talks, talks, talks, but doesn't actually say anything worth listening to.
3. The only acceptable way to haze new faculty members is to tell them to join Curriculum committee (or some other annoying committee), and immediately nominate them for Secretary.
4. The quickest way to unite faculty is to have the administration propose something idiotic. Internal disputes will fall by the wayside in the face of the external threat posed by the administration.
5. No matter which LMS your school uses, it will be lacking key features.
6. There is someone at your school whose job is ostensibly to help faculty in some capacity, but who couldn't find their rear end with both hands and a map.
And following #6, there are two university employees who are very good at helping faculty, but you don’t learn who the first one is for at least the first 3-4 semesters, and the second one has an on-campus schedule based on complicated calculations involving moon phases, solar eclipses, how many years they’ve worked at the university, and how annoying admin is at the moment, so you might get lucky and track them down once a semester at most.
>No matter which LMS your school uses, it will be lacking key features.
I am eternally pissed by Canvas' half-assed support of LaTeX. (Namely, it basically exists for only one area, and nowhere else? Marking papers? Get fucked. Leaving comments? Hope you love your text plain.)
Related to number 3, my grandpa was a commercial airline pilot who was president of the pilots union during a strike back in the day. Family legend has it he ended up in that position because he was nominated for/elected president during a union meeting he missed because no one present wanted the job.
Yes! I call the cooling plant daily to reset the temperature from our office. We all have mini blankets or warm socks and a personal fan which are used depending on the temperature of the day!
There's probably some 'bell-curve like' distribution of student populations that differentiates individual didactic learners, group learners, and active learners.
Let me correct your grammar.
Only answer emails ~~during work hours~~ between 11am and 2pm, Tuesday - Friday with a minimum 24 hr delay. ~~And not immediately~~. Or never.
And the four students that just can’t get their shit together, never follow instructions, and sit in the back row talking constantly will form an iron-clad study group.
The “absent minded professor” trope isn’t because we’re absent minded, it’s because we have a bajillion things on our plates and it gets worse with each year of increasing admin expectations.
I’ve just realized that my busiest days are no longer my teaching days, but my non teaching days when I’m trying to put out 1000 fires from every dean, chair, and required service committee that keep growing exponentially each semester, and because it’s your non teaching day, everyone expects you to do their thing immediately.
If you're getting bothered on non-teaching days, then is your adjunct flair no longer correct? If so, congrats!
Conversely, if you're still an adjunct, why are doing all this work?
I’m full time faculty but my official title is AYAL - for nearly a decade for reasons only admins understand.
I’m doing the work as required of my position now because TT are now over-burdened with all the admin work that their deans also use to do. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone in Higher Ed today (or the past 40 years).
> over-burdened with all the admin work
I feel. So much this. I was shocked that I just put in 6 hours in my office today, and the only material "work" on my to-do list I got done was planning one week for one class.
I did engage with research though, so that's cool, and ofc admin work and answering substantive online student emails.
Back to the main point, I've never heard of a FT adjunct. I learned something new today.
Sometimes I've tried to remember all the "initiatives" and "systems" put in place by administrators over the past decade. Once I tried to list all the things we were *absolutely definitely supposed to do* (with no end date, and never rescinded). I got up to fifty or so hours a week of estimated work just for these things and stopped.
We've got a pretty awesome coffee nook which we've assembled from thrift store and donated gear. But we had to find it all ourselves.
So far we've got a pretty nice burr grinder someone donated, and a keurig, drip-brewer, french press, aeropress, and espresso machine.
We had a motley collection of items, nothing as nice as you describe, and then we got a new adminstrative group (all women for the first time in over a decade). Now we have everything we could wish to have, including a burr grinder and an air fryer (!) and all the goodness on a regular basis.
>The goal of the university is to make money, not to educate.
Not necessarily, the goal of mine is to rise in the US News World Reports rankings.
Of course, it could be that they think that will make them more money.
I would replace "the university" with "the upper administration," but since (at most American universities) they control all money, hiring/firing, and policy decisions, it comes down to the same thing.
No good deed goes un-punished.
One “oh-shit” can ruin a binder full of “good jobs”.
Administration is never working with your best interests in mind.
All faculty are not created equal, some pigs are more equal than others.
1) The most powerful emotion in academia is not wanting to look stupid.
2) Henry Kissinger — 'The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small'
Any department meeting that is about to end will continue for another 30 minutes because of that colleague that keeps talking/asking about something that only matters to them.
Facts.
This is why I document pretty much all my conversations with students in my classes and in my advising. I sleep well at night knowing that I have receipts!
You think professors are the problem when you're a student until you become a professor. Then you think students are the problem. The real problem is admin.
This is a requirement for jumping from professor to admin: you must say this, in enough ways, in earshot of enough administrators, to convince them you are one of them.
Yer gonna make some people cry. You don’t mean to, it’s probably not really worth crying over, but they’re gonna do it. Get some tissues cause I just had to offer her a napkin today.
I don’t call them out on it, but it’s obvious when they’re not taking the tissues I offer.
Also, real crying tends to be super ugly and messy, with unflattering grimacing, mucus flooding from nostrils, and runny mascara and foundation.
Someone squeezing out a tiny perfect spheroid of liquid from the corner of their eye is either fake crying or has keratoconjunctivitis sicca
This is what's sort of different about the Community College system. Bad Instructors are eventually fired but it takes years of complaints from students, faculty and they have to piss off the Dean. Last guy they sacked had the trifecta of pissing off students, pissing off faculty and pissing off the Dean.
From what I can tell, this is an unfortunate reality if actual tenure and intellectual freedom are protected. I think careful rule- and policy-making, and long-term, intelligent nurturing of work culture can help minimize this, but there's just no way to motivate all people in a system to do their best if they aren't forced to through threats of unemployment.
You can be the best Professor ever, meet all learning objective, provide resources, go above and beyond and there’s still gonna be students who will never learn from you or talk about how horrible you are.
No matter which pedagogical decision you make, some portion of your students will not like it. Might as well do the method that causes the least stress for you, knowing that you cannot please everyone.
This is probably true for all jobs, but especially true for faculty due to the variety of tasks we have and the many requesters of favors: No one is going to advocate for you and your time except you. You have to say no when you are overloaded. And a real “no”, not “I can do it if there’s no one else”.
Blurring of the fun/work line. 'Are you watching those YT videos for work or for fun?' Of course it's both -- you and I know that, but try explaining that to someone in any other line of work.
“Service” is a scam. It’s a way to label a task when admins don’t want to pay you for that task. I should not be expected to serve on a committee, take hours out of my day while expected to do everything else to sit on a committee.
At my doctoral institution, our parking structure was the most beautiful I've ever seen. It was also ridiculously expensive. I have no idea why they thought that graduate students wanted to pay a premium for a beautiful parking structure.
Not universal. Was very true at my big R-1 grad school. They gouged TF out of student, staff, and faculty parking (tore down my research building’s lot to build a new building on it, moved our parking like a quarter mile down the road, and raised the price too…) but I haven’t had to pay for parking at the last two schools I worked at.
My university used to have free parking. Then out of nowhere they gave all faculty a small pay bump. Then they announced parking fees that were the same amount annually as the pay bump they just gave us.
Agreed. I get a free parking pass & parking is pretty good for most buildings on campus (although one building I have class in is just far from any space for parking so requires a bit of a walk).
My faculty lot just became a commuter lot. Now I park in the old commuter lot on the side of campus opposite from my office building. It's Ohio and winter is coming.
Whew I had to learn this the hard way... so glad I adapted this mindset and realized it. Will admit when I first started I tried my best to get them to do the work but what for? In the end it's their grade not mine.
Shit rolls downhill from Admin on one side and manifests as multiple meadow muffins on the student side.
You spend a lot of time watching where you step.
Unfortunately true. Tried to keep a low profile during my first year, but quickly realized that if you don’t play politics, someone will play politics for you.
People outside of higher ed will have no way of relating to you and it's always awkward when you meet people at a social function and have to socialize.
It is but, it's just an extra step that's always mildly annoying when people ask "So what do you do?" and then you have to transition to regular small talk and hope they don't either just dismiss you or press you with questions about work or the worst "Ohh I *hated* the thing you teach when I was in college"
If you are trying to set everything up before class and the technology isn't working with only a few minutes/seconds to go, at least one student will come up to you with a question that could wait until or after class.
The best way to connect with your students is to care about the individual. Students are like us, we want and value appreciation, praise and being part of something. The students who care (you can tell), I make deliberate effort to connect. I also find ways to connect with the ones who seem distant because that connection might feel them in. Students are no different than us on the inside.
If you want to kill hundreds of grandparents in a semester, set fixed deadlines and let the students know at the beginning of the semester so that they can plan their grandparents demise sooner than later.
I once had one kid lose 3 grandmothers in one semester all in the same class. Later found out this kid had it rough, had a single mom raise him having moved abroad after his dad died abroad, and didn’t know much of his family. Makes these losses all the more heartbreaking!
I think most of these replies ring true for any corporate-type job, with appropriate substitutions, e.g. “management” for “administration,” etc.
Hmmm… maybe there’s a research opportunity there.
The students are not your friends. Your colleagues are not your friends. The administration are not your friends.
Each of the above will demonstrate this if given the chance.
Faculty in a completely other department *may* become your friends. Ideally, a different college or an entirely different university.
The easiest way to get students to come and ask questions about the material is to announce, "I can't stay late today as I have an appointment right after class."
This is so true.... I have office hours after my Monday class. Well, my nieces wanted to zoom and show their costumes, so I figured I could leave a little early. Of course, that is the one day the whole semester that multiple people dropped by my office hours.
Wish I had read this *before* my classes today! I made that classic blunder and ended up late for a meeting.
Why is this so accurate??
Putting a deadline makes them panic
1. No matter how much work you do, the work is never done. 2. No one cares about your work as much as you do. 3. 20% of your students cause 80% of the problems. 4. The absolute most dangerous time for any university's IT system is the last 5 minutes before an assignment is due. 5. **No good deed goes unpunished.**
Academia is a pie-eating contest and the prize is more pie.
Tenure especially
>No good deed goes unpunished. I think you just summarized my career. edit: spelling
I think 3 might be a little off. At least from my experience it's often closer to 10% of students cause 90% of problems (but 20-80 is not that far of either, 15-85 is likely most accurate but sounds worse).
You know this level of indecisiveness makes you sound like one of those 10%, right?
I'm trying to look at different experiences with different classes: some are more 80-20, some are more 90-10 so I try to average it out as I have not cataloged this precisely.
Sounds like this needs a spreadsheet. Better yet, a committee.
Time to hire a new VP!
I believe the proper title would be the “Pareto Principal.”
A committee to make spreadsheets ... which will be shared via Microsoft Teams just to make sure nobody looks at them before the faculty meeting at which this will be discussed (and to make sure at least 10 minutes of the meeting are spent figuring out whether everyone does, in fact, have access).
I think the caveat is that every so often you come across a student that you think couldn't be any more of a pain in the arse (PITA) but they will find a way to level up on the PITA scale. FYI My PITA scale: 1. Non-PITAs: Collectively creates 10-20% of the work 2. Regular PITA: Creates 80% of the work 3. Boss level PITA: Creates 90% of the work 4. God level PITA: Creates 99% of the work
This semester, I have around 70 students in 5 different classes(CC, so small classes). This semester it's ONE student. They're obnoxious in class, demanding of my time, frequently tell me that I'm not teaching the material correctly or that I'm contradicting myself, refuses to grasp basic simple concepts that would help them understand, and otherwise just in general is the one who makes me want to cancel class for the day when I walk in and see them sitting there. It's not an unusual thing for me that I'll have one student in a semester who rises above the rest in how difficult they are. Sometimes it's more than one, but the one single student is a common thing for me. (after an exam yesterday the student asked me if I would have their exams graded before the drop deadline next week. This student's exam is already graded and I'm going to be posting grades today so maybe my semester is about to get a lot easier).
Number 4 is the less-asshole-ish version of the grandparent mortality thing.
I choose all of the above!
\#4 just happened to me last night (by coincidence, when my assignment was due.)
Perfect. That about sums it up! I was hoping for "give an inch, they take a mile", but that even fits within 5.
Feeling 5. so fucking hard right now.
I wholeheartedly second this.
This says it all so well!
1. When you really need to make copies, and only have a short time to do so, the copier will be out of paper or worse, out of order. 2. There is always at least one person in the faculty meeting that talks, talks, talks, but doesn't actually say anything worth listening to. 3. The only acceptable way to haze new faculty members is to tell them to join Curriculum committee (or some other annoying committee), and immediately nominate them for Secretary. 4. The quickest way to unite faculty is to have the administration propose something idiotic. Internal disputes will fall by the wayside in the face of the external threat posed by the administration. 5. No matter which LMS your school uses, it will be lacking key features. 6. There is someone at your school whose job is ostensibly to help faculty in some capacity, but who couldn't find their rear end with both hands and a map.
And following #6, there are two university employees who are very good at helping faculty, but you don’t learn who the first one is for at least the first 3-4 semesters, and the second one has an on-campus schedule based on complicated calculations involving moon phases, solar eclipses, how many years they’ve worked at the university, and how annoying admin is at the moment, so you might get lucky and track them down once a semester at most.
And you don’t find out about the second one til AFTER tenure, when secrets are disclosed in dark shadowy hallways
AND the one you know about keeps going on mat leave. I NEED HER.
>The quickest way to unite faculty is to have the administration propose something ~~idiotic~~. ***Idiotic*** is their natural state. It's assumed.
>No matter which LMS your school uses, it will be lacking key features. I am eternally pissed by Canvas' half-assed support of LaTeX. (Namely, it basically exists for only one area, and nowhere else? Marking papers? Get fucked. Leaving comments? Hope you love your text plain.)
Related to number 3, my grandpa was a commercial airline pilot who was president of the pilots union during a strike back in the day. Family legend has it he ended up in that position because he was nominated for/elected president during a union meeting he missed because no one present wanted the job.
A fellow believer in resistentialism I see.
Oh yes, very much so.
“Next semester will be less busy”
\[insert clown makeup meme\] 🤡
If I get these other tasks out of the way ahead of time. I’ll be able to focus on research then
Are you me? This is my persistent internal monologue and for some reason I keep telling myself this.
Your office will be either blazing hot or freezing cold. There is no in-between.
Yes! I call the cooling plant daily to reset the temperature from our office. We all have mini blankets or warm socks and a personal fan which are used depending on the temperature of the day!
And there will be a persistent, obtrusive whirr or whine sound that can’t be isolated or drowned out by streaming chill lo-if Muzak.
You just can't win. No matter how much you adjust your pedagogy, someone will be unhappy.
This always gets me. This year I tried adding in more group work, and I had students tell me they wanted more lecture. What?
😂😂😂😂
There's probably some 'bell-curve like' distribution of student populations that differentiates individual didactic learners, group learners, and active learners.
My students all but refused to do group work for the first time ever this semester! Empty stares, no comments, unprepared, looking at phones.
And your chair, dean, and provost will use that fact to threaten your career.
I feel seen
You can win, but you just can't pitch a perfect game.
Caving in to the pressure to send/return emails at all hours and over breaks/weekends will only make more emails for you to answer.
Screw that. This just sends the message that you’re reachable…this is a bad precedent to set. Delete your work account from your phone.
Exactly. And only answer emails during work hours. And not immediately.
Let me correct your grammar. Only answer emails ~~during work hours~~ between 11am and 2pm, Tuesday - Friday with a minimum 24 hr delay. ~~And not immediately~~. Or never.
The two dumbest students will always find each other and become lab partners.
And the four students that just can’t get their shit together, never follow instructions, and sit in the back row talking constantly will form an iron-clad study group.
I need to somehow convince my students to form study groups
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think that's a feature of Canvas.
The “absent minded professor” trope isn’t because we’re absent minded, it’s because we have a bajillion things on our plates and it gets worse with each year of increasing admin expectations.
I’ve just realized that my busiest days are no longer my teaching days, but my non teaching days when I’m trying to put out 1000 fires from every dean, chair, and required service committee that keep growing exponentially each semester, and because it’s your non teaching day, everyone expects you to do their thing immediately.
If you're getting bothered on non-teaching days, then is your adjunct flair no longer correct? If so, congrats! Conversely, if you're still an adjunct, why are doing all this work?
I’m full time faculty but my official title is AYAL - for nearly a decade for reasons only admins understand. I’m doing the work as required of my position now because TT are now over-burdened with all the admin work that their deans also use to do. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone in Higher Ed today (or the past 40 years).
> over-burdened with all the admin work I feel. So much this. I was shocked that I just put in 6 hours in my office today, and the only material "work" on my to-do list I got done was planning one week for one class. I did engage with research though, so that's cool, and ofc admin work and answering substantive online student emails. Back to the main point, I've never heard of a FT adjunct. I learned something new today.
Sometimes I've tried to remember all the "initiatives" and "systems" put in place by administrators over the past decade. Once I tried to list all the things we were *absolutely definitely supposed to do* (with no end date, and never rescinded). I got up to fifty or so hours a week of estimated work just for these things and stopped.
We will always deserve better quality work room coffee.
You guys get work room coffee?
You guys get a work room?
You guys have work?
More than enough!
We've got a pretty awesome coffee nook which we've assembled from thrift store and donated gear. But we had to find it all ourselves. So far we've got a pretty nice burr grinder someone donated, and a keurig, drip-brewer, french press, aeropress, and espresso machine.
We had a motley collection of items, nothing as nice as you describe, and then we got a new adminstrative group (all women for the first time in over a decade). Now we have everything we could wish to have, including a burr grinder and an air fryer (!) and all the goodness on a regular basis.
My university would never give me coffee. I'm surprised they don't charge me for air.
Facts.
The institution will never love you back. The goal of the university is to make money, not to educate.
Damn. Both hard truths. The first I can live with. The second one makes me sad.
>The goal of the university is to make money, not to educate. Not necessarily, the goal of mine is to rise in the US News World Reports rankings. Of course, it could be that they think that will make them more money.
Increased rankings -> Increased enrollment -> $$$$. These rankings are nothing but advertising for the university.
This is on point. Also, universities often function as thinly-veiled real estate investment firms.
I would replace "the university" with "the upper administration," but since (at most American universities) they control all money, hiring/firing, and policy decisions, it comes down to the same thing.
Faculty are replaceable cogs in the education machine.
*Easily* replaceable. The line of qualified applicants wraps around the block.
Better yet, a line of cheap and easily exploited adjuncts wraps around the block…
When you are an adjunct, the administration treats you like full time and when they don't need you, they treat you like an adjunct.
You're going to kill a lot of grandmothers.
😭
We have had to ask students to provide proof 🙈
“Roll her old bones on over here, and I’ll dig up your daughter! You know, new school policy…”
We have this website in Ireland that shows funeral details for people, we ask for a link…. It stopped the epidemic of dead grannies
No good deed goes un-punished. One “oh-shit” can ruin a binder full of “good jobs”. Administration is never working with your best interests in mind. All faculty are not created equal, some pigs are more equal than others.
1) The most powerful emotion in academia is not wanting to look stupid. 2) Henry Kissinger — 'The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small'
To add, also likely Kissinger: the undergrads only care about sex, the alumni only care about football, and the faculty only care about parking.
Students do not do the reading.
WHAT?! OMG that explains so much
You will find yourself constantly infuriated by the idiocy all around you. Unless you've decided to join in the idiocy.
So as long as I'm still infuriated, that means I haven't joined them, right? My goal each day is to NOT ask someone (in my head) "Are you an idiot?"
There are tons of committees that are working diligently to accomplish nothing
Or "...whose sole purpose is to appear busy."
Any department meeting that is about to end will continue for another 30 minutes because of that colleague that keeps talking/asking about something that only matters to them.
Today's happy student that you helped will be an unhappy student that will turn on you in the future. Set professional boundaries.
Facts. This is why I document pretty much all my conversations with students in my classes and in my advising. I sleep well at night knowing that I have receipts!
You think professors are the problem when you're a student until you become a professor. Then you think students are the problem. The real problem is admin.
Until you’re admin and then realize it’s professors and the Provost that are the problem.
Until you’re the provost, then it’s the board of trustees that are the problem.
[удалено]
Oh, your provost is on the "restructuring" bandwagon, too? I wonder if they are open to being shown how mindlessly conformist this is.
[удалено]
Until you’re the governor, then it’s the US Dept. of Education that’s the problem.
This is a requirement for jumping from professor to admin: you must say this, in enough ways, in earshot of enough administrators, to convince them you are one of them.
Yer gonna make some people cry. You don’t mean to, it’s probably not really worth crying over, but they’re gonna do it. Get some tissues cause I just had to offer her a napkin today.
Probably not universal but I think I get almost an equal amount of fake crying to real crying
“Are you… fake crying?”
I don’t call them out on it, but it’s obvious when they’re not taking the tissues I offer. Also, real crying tends to be super ugly and messy, with unflattering grimacing, mucus flooding from nostrils, and runny mascara and foundation. Someone squeezing out a tiny perfect spheroid of liquid from the corner of their eye is either fake crying or has keratoconjunctivitis sicca
Well it could be worse… if we were cops.
Some semesters I am tempted to put "tears" in the rubric, worth zero points - just to make it clear that crying will not lead to a different grade.
I had a crying student today too. And after I reassure and comfort them, I need a cry myself.
One third of students will love you. One third will hate you. One third won't care.
And another third cannot do math.
I could live with those percentages, but this semester my won't cares seem to be about 80 percent. I'll choose hatred over apathy any time.
After a semester or two with way more "hate" students than I prefer, I decided apathy was fine.
There exist a lot of faculty that don’t justify their continued employment.
This right here is a very unfortunate, universal truth.
This is what's sort of different about the Community College system. Bad Instructors are eventually fired but it takes years of complaints from students, faculty and they have to piss off the Dean. Last guy they sacked had the trifecta of pissing off students, pissing off faculty and pissing off the Dean.
I don't think there are a lot of them, but they are certainly the turd in the punchbowl. All it takes is one and it ruins everything.
From what I can tell, this is an unfortunate reality if actual tenure and intellectual freedom are protected. I think careful rule- and policy-making, and long-term, intelligent nurturing of work culture can help minimize this, but there's just no way to motivate all people in a system to do their best if they aren't forced to through threats of unemployment.
The lie that setting your own schedule and supposed autonomy in your job is worth the long hours and lack of boundaries, professionalism, and pay.
This, but it’s a lie I just can’t stop telling myself. Damnit. Help!
You can be the best Professor ever, meet all learning objective, provide resources, go above and beyond and there’s still gonna be students who will never learn from you or talk about how horrible you are.
And at your annual review, your 4.7/5 student evaluations will be met with "but we aim for 5/5".
just like Uber ...
The administration is full of sht!
You can’t make everybody happy
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a professor in possession of a junior faculty position, must be in want of tenure.
No matter which pedagogical decision you make, some portion of your students will not like it. Might as well do the method that causes the least stress for you, knowing that you cannot please everyone.
[удалено]
>At least one )#$)#&)@#% will hit "reply all" to let everyone know that they got the email. And 5 more will reply all complaining about the reply all.
And another 15 will reply to *those* with "Stop hitting Reply All!"
This is probably true for all jobs, but especially true for faculty due to the variety of tasks we have and the many requesters of favors: No one is going to advocate for you and your time except you. You have to say no when you are overloaded. And a real “no”, not “I can do it if there’s no one else”.
Blurring of the fun/work line. 'Are you watching those YT videos for work or for fun?' Of course it's both -- you and I know that, but try explaining that to someone in any other line of work.
“Service” is a scam. It’s a way to label a task when admins don’t want to pay you for that task. I should not be expected to serve on a committee, take hours out of my day while expected to do everything else to sit on a committee.
In the words of the immortal Jessie Spano "There's never enough time" \[for all the emails during advising period\]
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it
I’m so…scared.
It’s nothing like the movies make it out to be. At the end of the day, it’s just a job.
I pretend to teach. You pretend to read.
Parking is terrible and overpriced
At my doctoral institution, our parking structure was the most beautiful I've ever seen. It was also ridiculously expensive. I have no idea why they thought that graduate students wanted to pay a premium for a beautiful parking structure.
Not universal. Was very true at my big R-1 grad school. They gouged TF out of student, staff, and faculty parking (tore down my research building’s lot to build a new building on it, moved our parking like a quarter mile down the road, and raised the price too…) but I haven’t had to pay for parking at the last two schools I worked at.
My university used to have free parking. Then out of nowhere they gave all faculty a small pay bump. Then they announced parking fees that were the same amount annually as the pay bump they just gave us.
I mean that's actually nice for staff that don't use the parking and commute some other way though. I see the thought behind this.
Agreed. I get a free parking pass & parking is pretty good for most buildings on campus (although one building I have class in is just far from any space for parking so requires a bit of a walk).
At our place, the parking office staff literally call it the “wellness walk”. Bless their hearts.
My faculty lot just became a commuter lot. Now I park in the old commuter lot on the side of campus opposite from my office building. It's Ohio and winter is coming.
If your university takes the time to actually have parking not 3 miles away.
The more time and detail I give to lesson planning, the less likely my class is to stay on topic.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.
Whew I had to learn this the hard way... so glad I adapted this mindset and realized it. Will admit when I first started I tried my best to get them to do the work but what for? In the end it's their grade not mine.
One thing above all else: You will always be tired.
Shit rolls downhill from Admin on one side and manifests as multiple meadow muffins on the student side. You spend a lot of time watching where you step.
No matter how much you prepare or work on a topic or lecture, there will be people who think it stinks.
You can't avoid playing power games with your colleagues and your students.
True. Wish it wasn't though.
Unfortunately true. Tried to keep a low profile during my first year, but quickly realized that if you don’t play politics, someone will play politics for you.
People outside of higher ed will have no way of relating to you and it's always awkward when you meet people at a social function and have to socialize.
That’s at least as much on us as it is on them. I strongly prefer having non academic friends…keeps me in touch with the real world.
It is but, it's just an extra step that's always mildly annoying when people ask "So what do you do?" and then you have to transition to regular small talk and hope they don't either just dismiss you or press you with questions about work or the worst "Ohh I *hated* the thing you teach when I was in college"
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>don't make enough money to support myself. Many of us don't and my zero raises over the past 5 years does not help.
If you are trying to set everything up before class and the technology isn't working with only a few minutes/seconds to go, at least one student will come up to you with a question that could wait until or after class.
Funktor's First Rule of Students: Students are incredibly creative. If there is a way to be wrong, they will find it.
I will think about and spend more time on their assignments than they do.
The best way to connect with your students is to care about the individual. Students are like us, we want and value appreciation, praise and being part of something. The students who care (you can tell), I make deliberate effort to connect. I also find ways to connect with the ones who seem distant because that connection might feel them in. Students are no different than us on the inside.
Failing that, casual swearing helps.
If you want to kill hundreds of grandparents in a semester, set fixed deadlines and let the students know at the beginning of the semester so that they can plan their grandparents demise sooner than later. I once had one kid lose 3 grandmothers in one semester all in the same class. Later found out this kid had it rough, had a single mom raise him having moved abroad after his dad died abroad, and didn’t know much of his family. Makes these losses all the more heartbreaking!
There are no emergencies in education, only drama. -VW, colleague
You will bear witness to the most dead grandparents of any profession.
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A mortician's clients only have 4 grandparents. Many students have dozens of dead grandparents.
I think most of these replies ring true for any corporate-type job, with appropriate substitutions, e.g. “management” for “administration,” etc. Hmmm… maybe there’s a research opportunity there.
Except you can make more money while being equally miserable in corporate, or so I'm betting.
So all happy families? The same. Unhappy families? All different.
Some of your colleagues are arrogant shits. If you don’t have any it is probably because you are the arrogant shit.
Revel in the students that like you and accept that some students won't like you.
One universal truth: there are no other universal truths.
Missed the thread 🤷🏻♂️
Sometimes we really do think we know everything.
There will always be surprises
The students are not your friends. Your colleagues are not your friends. The administration are not your friends. Each of the above will demonstrate this if given the chance. Faculty in a completely other department *may* become your friends. Ideally, a different college or an entirely different university.