Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Time for some drama, apparently

I should have suspected something was up. Things were quiet, too quiet. I should have known that sooner or later, the peace and serenity of my sabbatical would be shattered by....Departmental Drama!

Apparently sabbatical does not provide shelter from being shafted by one's department. Why, just the other day I was marvelling about how relaxed I am, not having to deal with the daily and weekly stupid little things that make me want to pull my hair out, about what a great job my chair was doing in insulating me from any and all obligations beyond getting research done....

But this was all before The Email arrived. Topic: next year's class schedule. Or, more specifically, the scheduling of my "pet elective" in such a way as to guarantee that *no one* (or very few people, likely not enough to run the class) will sign up for it.

I'm way too upset to deal with this right now, so I'm doing the smart thing and sitting on this for a few hours before I reply, at least until the urge to hurl things across the room subsides. But right now, I just can't help thinking that my department really doesn't want me to succeed. And that's a shitty, shitty feeling.

2 comments:

Twice said...

Bastards! I hate Department Chairs sometimes.

It is possible it is cluelessness rather than malevolence. When mine does something like this, it could be either.

Jane said...

Thanks, twice, for the words of sanity! :) I've exchanged a few emails w/ my chair, and I'm hoping to work out a compromise. It wasn't malevolence and it definitely wasn't cluelessness....more like a lack of thinking creatively combined with an unwillingness(?) to confront other involved parties for a better solution. (And maybe a hope that I wouldn't notice that something was amiss? A lack of consideration since I wasn't a voice in the room at the time of decision? Not sure.) At least, this is my read on the situation, which since I'm not there having these conversations could be completely wrong....

Ack. Sometimes being on leave can be messy!