Just curious about what you would do if you were me.
So my chair asked me to do a little service thing, on top of all my agreed-upon service things, that will take probably 3 hours of my time. My first thought? I'd have to skip yoga (which I'm already doing next week, for a previously agreed upon thing). My second thought: I owe him this, given how relatively little I'm doing even though I am technically "full time." My third: Best Professor Friend did substantially less (like, really, nothing) and I'm already having to get childcare at all hours of the day (7:45 am!!!!) to cover the random shit I was asked to do. Fourth: This is a total favor. I get absolutely nothing out of it, and my annual merit review next year is already going to suck because I won't have published much of anything and I'll have been out of the classroom for an entire year and even if one considers that my teaching was reallocated to service, doing one extra 3 hour thing really won't change the outcome. If I'm going to put in extra work time, it should be for real work, like writing/reading. Fifth: I'm tenured. Fuck this. Sixth: He knows I'm nice. He knows I'm one of those people he can ask to do things and I'll do them and be generally agreeable about it, even if I whine about it in my head or on a blog. Seventh: I still haven't gotten my entire raise, so why should I do anything for this university? But it's not really for the university, it's for my department, and I really do like my department most of the time, now that certain evil people have retired. Sigh.
This is the year of peace. What would bring me peace?
Wait. Is that a rhetorical question?
I would just do it. Because I pretty much always do things I am asked to/ expected to do. But I would maybe, after all is done, say to chair that you really are not going to be able to do many more of these types of favors because of your two small children and your other work commitments.
ReplyDeleteack. I hate those situations. What did you decide to do?
ReplyDeleteSaid I'd do it. But asked to get out of a thing at a really inconvenient time for which I have no childcare...
ReplyDelete