Going back to work next week. I've been enjoying (sort of) a two-week break between semesters. I say "sort of" because even though classes ended two weeks ago, I've been unable to be completely finished with the semester's work. There were exams, workbooks and stacks of powerpoint presentations to grade. There were essays to read, evaluate, and penalize for plagiarism. Then there were the on-line student records to enter, correct, and re-correct. And there were the students who, finding they were going to fail because of a lack of attendance, participation and work submission, began making desperate and repeated attempts to show an interest in passing the course.
All of these things took up time. And now, with half the break gone, I find it's time to start preparing for the coming term. As a condition of my employment, I am paid fairly well per hour of class taught with the understanding that I must consider myself compensated for the the work done outside of class.
Funny, but when I'm called in during my 'holiday' to clear up errors resulting from a lack of foresight, planning or effort on the part of management, I find myself less inclined to accept the terms of the contract with good grace.
Am I lazy? Oh yes. But am I justified in feeling like my employers are taking advantage of everyone on these sorts of contracts?
What do you think?
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Alien at Large:
- Datsun Z
- Souf London, United Kingdom
- I am, in fact, a distinctly moral individual. But they are distinctly individual morals.
1 comment:
I guess I'm commenting a month too late to be of any help, but that's probably for the best since I'm deeply ensconced in the ranks of the Low Morale Army. You probably shouldn't listen to anything I have to say on the subject of working for unappreciative, advantage-taking educational institutions. But while am at it, here goes.
Fuck. Them. Your time is YOUR time, it makes you more effective at your job, it allows you to come back stronger when the break's over, but more importantly than any of that, it makes you human again.
Managers, except for the ones who go out of their way to be nice or helpful, deserve zero slack and all the disrespect in the world.
Along with my coworkers, I'm in a pretty bad mood about my gig right now. What's the point of getting great performance reviews year after year when all it results in is a 2% annual increase in pay? [An increase mendaciously labeled as a "cost-of-living" increase. The cost of living, the cost of our crappy overpriced health insurance, the cost of everything is going up anywhere from 5-20% annually, you motherfuckers, and you goddamn well know it. The university president, earning well over a half million a year, had the gall to tell a meeting of faculty that "money doesn't grow on trees."]
One of my co-writers loves to point out the embittering fact that the most money you ever make on our jobs is on your first day. From there the wage perpetually declines in "real" terms, as the economists would dismally call it.
So when it comes to institutions and management that are likely to jerk you around for years on end
and accepting their terms in good grace, my vote is solidly in the "No" column. Don't give the bastards an inch if you don't have to.
All right, enough Internet tough talk, time to go cower in my cubicle.
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