7.4.12

I guess it's a good sign

that I was able to be slightly humorous just now in my thanks entry - or indeed that I was able to put anything on the list this morning at all.

I have been informed that as of July 2013 I will no longer be employed. Giving me a year before it goes into effect IS a kindness but I choose to feel bitter anyway.

Of course I'm still taking it personally even tho the rational side of my head knows that what they said is perfectly valid - no reflection on my work, but French enrollment is going down and I'm the only person who is full time but not tenured, hence firing me will give them more money for the budget than firing someone else. Nevermind that there are at least 2 Spanish lecturers that I can think of who are generally known to be nearly worthless as teachers and supposedly firmly in the chaff category, and yet since Spanish is growing (like everywhere) the expendable person is me. I have no idea if others are getting booted from any other languages - there aren't that many other full-time lecturers who aren't in Spanish.

And so much for my theory all along that they had me doing so many fucking things that they couldn't possibly fire me. This aspect has J. our section leader in a bit of turmoil now, too. Of course I _won't_ be doing as much stuff from here on out... but more on that later.

Typical academicians without any semblance of know-how re HR/mgmt/employee interaction or best practices for situations like these - they handled the meeting abysmally (altho of course I would have thought it a bad meeting regardless) fucking asking me about how Paris was (and letting me go on about my theories and what I had planned already for fall recruitment), and then about how classes were (specifically, "How are the 200s?" to which I said, "Fine... I guess... what do you mean?" thinking, oh great, it's not about any of the stuff I was feeling paranoid about, I've apparently fucked something else up entirely and it has to do with my 200s...), before even hinting at anything. What the fuck? Smalltalk?! Really?

Also they did not inform J. beforehand - I believe him b/c tho he might have been able to hide prior knowledge  - I had immed. called him for a quick meeting after they told me Thursday that they needed to meet and he had no idea why - I know if he had known he would simply have said that he wasn't able to talk about it or something and that I needed to talk to them first - he really is one of the best section heads and most up-and-up people I've ever worked under.

But at any rate there's no way he could have faked how Absolutely Thrown For A Loop he was at the thought of who the fuck was going to do all the FR stuff now that I've been doing, not to mention my 10 (11 or 12 counting summer) classes a year. Granted with the aforementioned enrollment issues we might only be talking about 8-9 sections but take it from me - the rest of the people in the section are either already stretched too thin (K) or simply would not ever take more stuff on (everyone else, since K and I are the only people doing the extras currently) except if threatened perhaps, and they can't really threaten the tenure-track people much so that leaves the one part-timer, who kinda does this as a hobby anyway and I'm sure would simply default to housewifery if pushed too far out of her niche (= teaching + one committee).

Of course huge devastation and misery, then absolute panic, after this wondrous meeting, but tempered by J., and KD, and She Sings friends.

Still pretty panicked inside but calmer and not feeling quite so much like everything has to be done/decided/worked out right this minute.

Crazy (or perhaps not, knowing me) but my biggest panic yesterday and this morning has been re TC and Griz. I had been thinking I had a couple more years to socialize them and then trap them and bring them along to a new backyard/porch whenever S&L and I could buy a house...

Anyway.

I told J. I will not be attending any more faculty meetings and will be ignoring my FAS (crap system where we have to list the stuff we do and put percentages of time/energy for each as if to justify our employment) from here on out, and added that I was sorry to him personally but I would be dropping FC for next year. He chimed in wholeheartedly on the last part (chuckled ruefully with me at the first two - "Susan those are kinda crappy bright-sides, shit.") "Absolutely, I see no reason you need to continue with French Club in view of this."

Yes not the brightest of bright sides but those are still the only ones I can think of so far.

I forgot to mention here that Paris is already out the window - at least as my docket next year is concerned. I interrupted their lameass starts at apologies, "Wait, when exactly does this mean I'm out?" (They had said "one year.") Oh... they had to stop and think... "End of July, next year." "So I still have to do Paris?" (Which normally would not have been phrased just that way but the magic of prepping for that plus jobhunting was not something I was looking forward to of course.) "No, don't bother with Paris." (At once relieving me of a humongous amount of work while completely devaluing the one part of my job I know I've been doing really well with and where the pleasure is _almost_ commensurate with the energy/stress/time outlay.)

This morning I removed all online presence of Clems*n in Paris. REALLY wish I could go ahead and drop FC, but we're already starting on potential Intern*tional Festiv*l planning... of course the chance we'll get enough bodies to make it work is slim (just my luck it will work out, dammit - especially since I just jinxed it - je touche du bois). If this had happened a week earlier I would have been in time to drop it.

All right fine, yes, we all know I wouldn't have b/c I'm too fucking conscientious to let the officers down (who were already fairly gung ho, despite the lack of interest from the club at large).

OK I'm going to stop editing/adding to this journaling-aloud post.




So.

---------------------------
11 april 12 - I have since found out that the other lecturer I thought was part-time is in fact full-time, too, but makes $13,000 less per year than I do, news which at once confirms the dept. co-chairs' explanation AND makes me feel retroactively arrogant, which would be snarky in any other context but just now I need some puffed-up-ness. (The fact notwithstanding that with all my extra hats, damned-straight I should be making more.)

2 commentaires:

Needs an Editor a dit…

Ah, the postscript helps. I was thinking, "how can a non-tenure cost more than a tenure?" La vie n'est pas belle. And, NOW I won't be able to join you in Paris (now that I have a job with real vacation time and a liveable wage : (

Colleges make me mad. It's just like with "the Corporate World," working you to death b/c they know all humans are in fear of job-loss, letting you work so dang hard to — accurately — prove you ROCK, and then … merde.

Sucks that in Our American Meritocracy, it's the "in demand" though badly evaluated S. teachers who get to stay and not the GOOD teacher.

Any time to do a crash course in Español? Just kidding. Perhaps on the other coast there is higher need for French teachers. Or . . . that Louisiana non-college level school that does French immersion. Not that you want to teach science in French to a bunch of actual (instead of just "college babies") kids.

Oh, if you haven't fig. out my ID yet, it's Applecart T, I just forgot to log out of one Gmail into the other. This other site is my art blog (obviously : )

Ganbate, Susan-chan.

Susan a dit…

arigatou t-chan, lol I had guessed you, but glad I was right - honestly I loathe the thought of doing any more teaching at all but of course no time/money to retrain myself in anything else... anybody in your environs need a really intelligent organizer/project manager? yeah re money - way cheaper even to pay TWO part-timers (which is what it would take to cover my tasks) than one full-timer and they can't fire tenures of course (even tho the majority of them are doing Jack Shit). Anyway I'm going to go make myself stop thinking of this - I had put it -mostly- out of my mind the last couple of weeks of school and today my feelings on it are back to panic mode even tho I still don't have time to do much of anything re job-hunt or -thoughts until after finals... since I'm here this summer (teaching summer 2 for sure - summer 1 still up in the air) I really will be able finally to return to the Susan Who Actually Interacts with Her Friends and Answers Emails (assuming that person, who I've said was going to return for years now only always to have some other life crisis come up to blame for my lack of communication really does exist down inside here somewhere)... meanwhile...