*Something I THOUGH I had retweeted but guess I didn't? Anyway, it was an academician talking about how we are constantly measured and evaluated, how we have to apply for grant extensions, apply to go to conferences, go through rounds and rounds of peer review on everything we create, and in some cases even reapply for our jobs (post tenure review is a weak form of that). And they asked: Is it any wonder we crave approval and acceptance?
Sometimes I think the modern workplace is gamed in just such a way that it takes the most neurotic traits a person has and amplifies them and uses them against them. That's why this post-tenure review (which I must put the packet together for today) is making me so stressed out; while intellectually I know I'm not going up before "Bob and Bob" to defend my job, it FEELS like it to me. And like I've not done enough, even though my teaching evaluations would range from a grade of 82% (at the lowest) to somewhere in the 90-percents (at the highest) and I redeveloped a class and am redeveloping a second one this semester and I've met all the stated goals....
* This news item, and a comment about "Why"
And the comment, from JR Leonard: "Don’t have the answer, but I suspect that something about contemporary compliance culture acts as a tremendous burden for those take it seriously and a tremendous opportunity for those who wish to ignore it completely"
And oh my gosh, yes. This is the dirty secret of modern bureaucracies, especially academic ones: some people blithely break all the rules for their own benefit, and the response is, rather then confronting the rule breakers, the rule-makers make ever more restrictive rules and the burden falls on those who do try to comply.
I will also note that I buy a lot of my own lab supplies out of my own pocket because the time it would take to submit the paperwork and ask to have the university pay for it would "cost" me more in time than the $10 or whatever the supplies would cost. I am sure this is kind of baked into the system.
This is also why when someone violates a rule big-time (like when someone broke ADA by doing their extended-time online testing in a way that was actually unfair to the accommodated students), part of the 'restitution' is to make everyone - even people who never taught online - go through a seminar of an hour or so on how to do it right. (And also, and yeah I'm still bitter about this, additional Title IX workshops after someone WHO RETIRED BEFORE THE JUDGMENT CAME DOWN violated the rights of an individual)
As someone who was raised to value "fairness" on some level (in the sense of "fair dealing" - I can still hear my dad exclaiming "throw away your calculators!" to my brother and me whenever we complained about "she got a bigger piece of cake than I did" or "the toy he got was nicer than mine"), it's kind of infuriating. Especially when I'm TRYING to do everything the 'right' way because that's the way that is, in fact, fair to people - and someone else just breaks the heck out of the rule and the higher ups are like "LOL you all need correction, so here's a three-hour seminar on a Friday afternoon you must attend"
* There's a letter allegedly making the rounds from an HR department, where an employee was shamed for driving an "old" car with "fading paint" (a 2005 Camry, and yes, I know people who have older Toyotas and Hondas that run FINE and so why buy a new car?). And it makes me glad I'm in academia where no one really cares that much what you drive - oh, some comments might be made if you had really fancy new cars on a regular basis, but....academia is a place where you can point out that the sweater you are wearing is 25 years old and the worst people will think is that you're slightly eccentric.
But yeah - my brother worked for Large Red Insurance Company's home office for a few years, what finally led him to quit and pursue a different career path (once he was married and had a spouse bringing in enough money for them both to live on) was that he objected to the fact that you worked and strove to do good work, and if you did, you got a raise, but the unspoken expectation was you used it to buy a new set of golf clubs, or upgrade your car, or some kind of really conspicuous-consumption thing that was aimed at impressing your bosses. For the last year or so he was there he was engaged to be married and his goal was "save up money so my wife and I can eventually buy a house without taking on too big a load of debt" and....to me, that seems a far more sensible goal.
And anyway: no one has the right to tell you how you should spend disposable income and those kinds of cultures where you keep up with the Joneses are creepy. (I commented on Twitter: It's HOAs, work edition)
* I saw an ad for the movie that is apparently loosely based on "Fantasy Island" and it looks like a super dark, gritty reboot.
And okay: someone older than I am reminded me that the original show wasn't 100% light and silly (apparently on one episode Mr. Roark chased down the Devil? I don't know, I wasn't allowed to watch it, and even the "Love Boat" was viewed with a jaded eye by my parents as "questionable" for a tween....though I think most of the racier stuff flew about 10 feet above my head, I think I imagined it as a show about couples honeymooning (so the mushy stuff was OK) or couples falling in love while on the boat (and chaste hugs and kisses being as far as things went, and the assumption was they'd marry once they got back to land))
I joked that the dark gritty reboot of "The Love Boat" was that they all got STDs and the boat sank. Someone else said "Gilligans Island but cannibalism" and of course things could get silly very fast.
But. I am very, very tired of dark gritty reboots of things. I want more light, silly, nice reboots. I will admit the DuckTales reboot is good, even if it takes more of an "adventure" tone (and there is more "mild peril" than the original, and even an episode where it's implied Scrooge has died as a way to entrap Glomgold - which, when you think of it, is pretty dark). And the My Little Ponies reboot was good, though I am not sure it was any different in "darkness level" from the Generation 1 show.
I don't know. I dislike dark, gritty reboots for the same reason I dislike all the "YA dystopia" novels - isn't modern life scary enough, and gritty enough, without our entertainment always being that way? I mean, I guess I get the idea that this is "catharsis" (in the old Greek sense) and all that but I find it hard to read about dystopias without twitching a little and looking over my shoulder; while I GUESS the idea of YA dystopian fiction is "yay the Teens will save us from a totalitarian dictatorship" there's also the idea of "but we have to live in the dictatorship for a while" and.....there are enough REAL dictatorships, now and in the past, and I've read enough about real world people being 'disappeared' or people being starved out or sent to work in the heavy-metals mines without adequate protection if they hold views counter to what is Officially Approved....and, I'd just rather NOT. I don't care if a small band of Wolverines saves the world eventually; I'd rather not the world got into that state from the get-go.
I dunno. Partly because apparently the second half of 2019 into the first half (please God let it just be the first couple weeks though) of 2020 is going to be a personal annus horribilis for me....I need entertainment that distracts me in a happy way, that paints a world nicer and prettier than the one I currently inhabit.
(Seriously. I almost put aside "Bats in the Belfry" because a character I had regarded as sympathetic is now lying in the hospital, close to death, after being beaten over the head by someone believed to be involved with the murders (multiple). Though now they're raising questions about that guy, that maybe HE is somehow involved, and I don't know. I guess the answer is in most Golden Age mystery novels, the only character you can actually trust to be a decent person is the detective investigating. And I suppose there are even exceptions to that)
* And one last thing: I commented last night that once all this medical-scare stuff* is over, not only am I getting myself a weighted blanket (costing up to $200, I have decided, so I can get a halfway decent one), I am figuring out the restaurant within an hour's drive of me that has the BEST desserts, and I am going there and getting a big dessert and a cup of tea and I am going to eat it.
(*I don't even know. I've had some lower abdominal twinges these past few days but I don't know if it's (a) I'm hyper-conscious of that area right now and worrying about what might be lurking there, (b) it's just stuff going back to normal after an unexpected session, or (c) something is genuinely wrong. I will say the "discomfort" (which was minor and was more an awareness of "hey I have internal organs there" than real pain) is getting steadily less so I'm really hoping for b? But I'm still having that test done just to be sure. And I woke up around 2 am and laid in bed and worried for quite a while. I really want this to be over and the answer to be "bodies are just weird and your body was being weird")
1 comment:
At least I can FIND your web page, and even search for something I found there 6 months ago.
On Twitter, I don't know how to do that. That may be me, it may be Twitter.
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