Thursday, March 13, 2014

Hating all the things

Once again, my totally incompetent, completely flaky boss has taken my perfectly wonderful workable spring schedule and fucked it up royally.

I have a grad class. Boss: "When you like to teach your grad class?" Me: "Monday nights because the J is home on Mondays and he'll be able to watch the Magpie." Boss: "Perfect."

What does she do? She gives me a schedule that has me teaching the grad class from 6-9:30 on TUESDAY nights, a class that starts before the J gets home from work, by a full hour. A class that puts me on campus from 10:00 in the am until 9:30 at night. Child care aside, that's horrendous anyway.

I didn't notice this on the schedule because I had no need to check it. She told me the class would be scheduled for Mondays. I noticed last night after students were emailing me in confusion about the date of the class.

Her response: "Oh, well, I don't think there's anything we can do." I have the emails to her that show us agreeing on the Monday time. She emails the students so it "looks like her fault" which it is! to ask them if they can change to Monday because I can't teach the class on Tuesday, but puts in the email, "if you can't come on Mondays we'll just leave it as is." WTF? I can't come on Tuesdays! Why give the students an out? Why not just leave it with if you can't make this class, I will give you any other class of your choice and make it sub for this one. Fuck you boss!

What the hell am I going to do? I emailed the students myself and bribed them with food at the end of the quarter. I think my email was better than hers because I said I understood that it puts us all in a difficult position my asking them this and that I understand that I'm not the only one with scheduling and child care and work issues. I was so excited and hopeful about the classes this quarter and about my schedule but now, I mean, seriously, WTF? It's just expected then by her that J will take off work when mom leaves to watch the kid? Use up his vacation time because of her incompetence?

Maybe the students will come through for me and it will all work out. There are still a few days yet.

Any advice? What the hell can I possibly do about this as an untenured professor? Or, like last spring, am I going to have to take another one for the team (it doesn't seem that my male colleagues in the same position as me are asked to make the same sacrifices) because I'm untenured? Do I just suck it up, make the best of it, and avoid her for the quarter?

ETA: It looks like the students as of right now are able to make the change, which I do hope is true. Plus the grad chair just emailed them to tell them that class is on Mondays, whether they like it or not, which I'm sure she wasn't that harsh about it. It looks like we have to meet this Tuesday anyway so people can get their stuff in order to make the change, but thanks for letting me vent. I just needed to get some of the rage out and hopefully everything will work out. 


3 comments:

  1. All appendages crossed that it works out, this sort of thing is sooooo frustrating!

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  2. Fortunately everything worked out.

    ReplyDelete