Okay, so I gripe a little about grading papers and exams. Today, however, a light bulb went off in my head. The thing I really hate as an academic is administrative work required of the job. I spent the first three days of this week writing and rewriting syllabi, a course assessment, and my yearly self-evaluation. Of course, after writing them, I had to rename all the files because the Administrative Assistant for the college wants the names of the files and the headings within the actual files to be done in a certain manner to make filing and collating move along swiftly. Good luck there, getting academic types to do this is in the words of one colleague, "like herding cats".
Worse thing about all of this was hearing how badly some of my colleagues reacted toward the administrative assistant. Rather than just fulfilling the request for file names, etc. some of my colleagues felt it necessary to engage in arguments about having to actually submit the material and other about having to actually rename a silly computer file.
I learned very early on that there are two people you do not want to make angry--the secretary/administrative assistant, and the janitor. One keeps you out of trouble and the other helps keep your workspace from looking and smelling like a garbage dump.
Worse thing about all of this was hearing how badly some of my colleagues reacted toward the administrative assistant. Rather than just fulfilling the request for file names, etc. some of my colleagues felt it necessary to engage in arguments about having to actually submit the material and other about having to actually rename a silly computer file.
I learned very early on that there are two people you do not want to make angry--the secretary/administrative assistant, and the janitor. One keeps you out of trouble and the other helps keep your workspace from looking and smelling like a garbage dump.
No comments:
Post a Comment