There is an ongoing conversation among academics about the need to say 'no' in order to protect oneself from the burden of service work at the expense of one's own research. This is particularly geared toward junior faculty, faculty of color, and, to a certain extent, women. I am all for protecting one's time. But, as I'm sure I've griped before, the problem with saying no is that the work does not simply disappear....it shifts the burden to someone else.
In my department, as many places, this means associate professors do the bulk of the administrative and service work....sometimes to the detriment of their promotion to full. Now certainly associate professors should do more than assistant professors in terms of departmental/university service and so forth. But there needs to be room for us (speaking here as female associate prof) for us to say no as well. Which means sometimes someone else needs to say yes, even if they are not so inclined.
I'm not sure where exactly I'm headed with this, other than thinking about departmental service as a 'collective endeavor,' to use a phrase my new chair seems to like. That means, sure I'm not going to be available to go to dinner with this particular candidate, but of course I'd be happy to take her to breakfast. It means I'm sorry I can't take on chairing this committee, but count on me the next time (and really mean that). It means saying yes to what you can. Perhaps this is largely rhetorical, but simply having an awareness that your no means someone else does more is really important.
End of rant.
So this weekend, having said yes to quite a bit (OMG too many job candidates! too much kid festivities) I'm baking banana bread while Tiny Boy plays lego on LG's floor. I took a walk (the first time in two weeks I've been able to breathe well enough to do that...fuck adult onset asthma and winter viruses). Later I'll go grocery shopping and clean the house enough to dive into a new week. Bring it.
In my department, as many places, this means associate professors do the bulk of the administrative and service work....sometimes to the detriment of their promotion to full. Now certainly associate professors should do more than assistant professors in terms of departmental/university service and so forth. But there needs to be room for us (speaking here as female associate prof) for us to say no as well. Which means sometimes someone else needs to say yes, even if they are not so inclined.
I'm not sure where exactly I'm headed with this, other than thinking about departmental service as a 'collective endeavor,' to use a phrase my new chair seems to like. That means, sure I'm not going to be available to go to dinner with this particular candidate, but of course I'd be happy to take her to breakfast. It means I'm sorry I can't take on chairing this committee, but count on me the next time (and really mean that). It means saying yes to what you can. Perhaps this is largely rhetorical, but simply having an awareness that your no means someone else does more is really important.
End of rant.
So this weekend, having said yes to quite a bit (OMG too many job candidates! too much kid festivities) I'm baking banana bread while Tiny Boy plays lego on LG's floor. I took a walk (the first time in two weeks I've been able to breathe well enough to do that...fuck adult onset asthma and winter viruses). Later I'll go grocery shopping and clean the house enough to dive into a new week. Bring it.
I'm glad your breathing is better. You're entirely right about the service load on associate profs (especially women); the "someone else" who'll do the work in all those proud, defiant statements of "no more service" often is an associate (female) prof.
ReplyDeleteMy experience is that, when on a committee, the committee chair ends up doing 99.99999% of everything, and everyone else phones it in. I accept that now and accept that I will be overworked if I accept to chair anything.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about your place of employment, but a lot of service work here is busy work or done extremely inefficiently. For instance, our graduate admissions process is completely useless, yet this is one of the most labor-intensive committees there are. In reality, I only admit to work in my group those I see fit; I hand pick them; I certainly don't go through the pool of those that the committee prescreened. We would all be better served by people first flagging whom they want to bring in (which implies they have the money to do so), and then having the committee serve as a sanity check, rather than what we do now, which is screen a ton of applicants and admit too many grad students but without any financial offers (those are tied to grants), and then end up with a lot of miserable, advisorless, paying-their-own-way and starving international graduate students.
Faculty searches are also a major drain on existing faculty. If I am on the search cte, I accept that I have to go to meals, otherwise I don't unless in my area. I'm not for shunning all service, but I am for shunning service I absolutely don't have to do. The thing is that there are always too many people who will not think twice about avoiding 100% of all service if they can get away with it (and also do a crappy job of teaching). I and the minority like me who want the department to run smoothly end up picking up all the slack. My attitude is -- no more. If there isn't a critical number of people who care that the department runs, then perhaps it deserves to go to hell. I am not hired help to my bigshot male colleagues. Maybe we all deserve for everything to go to $hit if there are no viable mechanisms to compel everyone to chip in, not just the naturally conscientious ones.
To summarize: I am firmly in the camp, especially for women, of "Don't do anything that you absolutely do not have to, for there are too many of those who routinely get away with doing nothing that does not explicitly benefit their research agenda. By being conscientious and holding the fort, you are enabling them. If you drop the ball, and they don't pick it up, then so be it. If too few people care, the place deserves to go under."
My department really has a minimum number of committees to keep things running smoothly. The things that are laborious are searches and our advisory committee (and I happen to be doing both right now). Our few remaining committees, like merit review, are intense but just for like one month for the year.
ReplyDeleteI'm more cranky about the way that people say no, or repeatedly saying no, than the fact of the no. I really do believe in good departmental citizenship. I also know from your blog that you do an incredible amount of work so I'm not sure in the end you disagree...
Also, really, my dept is not full of those hotshots. It has some dead weight tenured profs who need to retire (a minimum) and a junior contingent who says no. Loudly. Repeatedly. While also complaining about the outcomes of various committees.
ReplyDeleteAnd associate profs who have been associate for way too long, because they are the ones who *need* to say no to get their work done and don't. Or they say yes to service because they have writing issues and then create a convenient excuse? That's a post for another time.