Busy work

I take issue with certain aspects of administrations in univeristies at times. Obviously, there is historically various battles between different areas of colleges and univeristies, be it undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, or administration. Everyone thinks that what they are doing is vital to the success of the university, and in many ways that is absolutely true.

However, as institutions grow, or decide they must add this or that program, there are quite a few issues that arise. For example, there are many departments on a university campus which are overstaffed, or just plain not needed. Or, if they are, they haven't much to occupy their average day, so they come up with busy work.

Case in point: I applied (and received) an internal grant for summer funding to work on my research. Obviously such internal grants aren't highly competitive, but still, I am sure that some people did not receive the grant (note though, that being a new faculty member definitely gave me priority over others, I am sure). To get this grant, as in other cases, I had to write a five page proposal justifying it, and yadda yadda yadda.

One of the requirements of accepting this grant was to attend three two-hour sessions hosted by whatever-the-name-of-this-particular-department-is, all about "How to write a successful grant proposal."

In other words, those who succeeded in obtaining this grant are the ones who must attend these seminars, wasting six hours of the summer. I know external grants are much more competitive, and that this department is very useful if one wants assistance in writing such proposals, but given that this is largely all they do, there is obviously a lot of free time to kill. And they take it out on us. (Shouldn't those who did not get the grant sit through this?)

Ironically, most of the faculty in my group are associate professors who have obtained many other grants in the past, so it is even more of a waste for them.

But this happens when the adminstration grows so much that there are too many departments focussing on such small aspects of the university. I like that there are sources for assistance whenever I need it, however there is no need to waste my time unnecessarily. Luckily I will be finished with these next week, so it's all good.

And back to...work?

Traveling definitely has an impact on my mental state. Being out of town all last week, I was out of my element, as it were, and thus while I got work done things were happening at a different pace. Then though is the problem of returning. Getting in Monday (after returning the rental car), I had one thing after another to get caught up on, with a new student coming in to work (so most of that day was spent with him).

Then yesterday I had a complete waste of time in the morning with a meeting to attend that was required by my summer grant (two hours gone, just like that), and the afternoon was spent again catching up two students on various things. Now today I believe my other two students will be in so I will catch up with them, and that'll happen any minute now.

So I have to get work done at the moment, and I've caught up on most of my administrative work that had to be finished now. So I have to do something. But I am not really in the mood to do so, and I have to think about specifically what I would like to do at the moment.

This is a perennial problem, whenever I have a million things to do, most of which are second-long, mindless issues. When all of those are done, the fewer bigger things have to get tackled and I'm not in the mindset to do them. But I will!

And hopefully get distracted immediately by a student.

Worth the money?

There are regularly articles about whether or not college is "worth the cost." That is, given the soaring cost of college tuition, do you get your money's worth?

News articles are often told by way of polls, as in, "this percent of college graduates believe X" while "this percent of Americans believe Y" and so forth. I don't believe this is a very constructive way to discuss the issue, but then again, modern media is very focused on public polling, since obviously if something is believed by the majority, then it must be true.* I personally believe that even the ridiculously overpriced tuitions of many private schools are worth it, in many regards, but I don't really wish to discuss this in great detail.

What this made me think of, however, was what students do to get the most out of their (or their parents') money. In my courses, I teach scientists who may or may not go on to continue "doing science," but they are majors in this particular field (I am for the moment not thinking about the students taking classes outside their major), and thus are interested to some degree in learning about science. Depending on how many courses a student takes each semester, the cost per hour for a given class is on the order of $100 for this particular (private) university.

There is sometimes an attitude that I have noticed both here and at other institutions (sometimes even among graduate students who are not paying at all, but instead being paid to go to school!) that the students are here to be taught, which is very different than the students being here to learn.

For example, I had a discussion with a student the other day, about a different class he was in. He discussed his severe disappointment with how the class was taught (often a complaint made about many professors, I'm sure about myself as well at times), and that he didn't learn anything in the course. I responded with the idea that this is a moment that he, as a student, should have stepped up and worked that much harder to get as much out of the class as he could, by looking at other resources and finding ways to learn the material in other ways. The typical response emerged, that being, "Well, I was really busy with other courses."

This is a sentiment I understand. I am relatively young, and recall my undergraduate days (for now) very well, and I get it. But I also remember wanting to work as hard as possible to understand everything I could, at least in my major classes. I get a sense that this is not the norm, that many students expect to be taught everything but not have to do any additional work on their own. I do not have enough experience to know when this trend began, and perhaps it has always been the norm, and I was an outlier. (Most likely if this is true, it is true for all academics.)

So discussions of whether or not college is "worth it" bug me, because it all depends on the individual student. In fact, there are some of my students that seem to not put any effort whatsoever in their classes. I feel as though they think that they are paying a lot of money for a college degree and expect to get it, even though they do very little of the work. I look at those students and believe that college is not worth it for them. These are most likely students who thought Science was cool, and wanted to major in it without really understanding the work involved.

They will leave school with a mediocre knowledge of the subject matter, thinking that the piece of paper they receive will be their ticket to do anything. The problem will arise if they try to get a position that "needs" their specific Science degree, as any employer will interview them and realize how little they know. Having the degree is necessary for many jobs nowadays, but having the knowledge is essential for getting a job that actually uses the degree you have.

They do not seem to understand this.

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* Please note the sarcasm.

Meetings

My department here is very small, with six full-time (non-visiting) faculty. One result of this is very few faculty meetings, which for the most part is a good thing (just listen to any faculty member who has weekly or bi-weekly faculty meetings). All of ours have had to do with the search for a new faculty member, pretty much, and it makes me think that we won't really have many whenever we're not actually in the midst of a search.

This leads to several issues though. For one, when someone wants to do something (i.e., invite a speaker, host an event, work on rewriting all of the freshman science labs), they can just do it. This on some level is good, but it leads to this isolation in the department where everyone just is sort of doing their own thing, and well, inefficiencies arise.

There's also a feeling of a lack of cohesion. For example, I was never "formally introduced" into the department at some meeting, and while I knew everyone, and they all remembered me from my interview, it was just a strange feeling when I arrived.

Of course I'm past that, and overall I think it's a good setup for the department, and I shouldn't complain for fear of things changing for the worst.

It's done

We had a meeting yesterday about the student in my class who is failing. And this isn't the "doing poorly" kind of failing, it's the "only turning in two out of nine homeworks" kind of failing. This student has lied flat out and also never followed through on the "I'm going to start working hard on this" statements that are spoken constantly.

He is an athlete, and well, because of this has a special "athlete advisor." The advisor, the chair of our department (who also has the student in a class of his), and I all met to discuss the fact that this student is not going to make it as a major in this department. The topic even came up that he would be in another class I am teaching in the fall, and the chair mentioned that I have a reputation for being very hard, even for the best students. I responded with, "Yeah, there's no way he'll survive that class."

It was a very sad meeting. I know that students come to college and not all of them succeed. Plenty of people do not get to do what they really want to do, but this was kind of sad. The student had always wanted to major in my field, and had very specific goals for his future. However, he wasn't willing to put in the extra effort to get this accomplished. The thing is that courses in my field are generally more time consuming than other courses, and the major itself requires 17 courses to get the degree (the average is 13-14 here), and that is in addition to the university-wide core.

I left the meeting feeling both angry and sad. Angry because of the fact that there are clearly people at this university would who like to help this student in every way they can (and I was one of those people), and he just didn't care. Or at least, he didn't care enough to put in the effort on his part. The sad part really came from the fact that the kid was failing miserably, and just didn't realize how hard the subject was.

And he didn't listen to anyone.

I'm right where I should be

I was feeling a little down this morning. Part of it has to do with the fact that C left yesterday to head back upstate, and of course it sucks that he's not here.* Also, the excitement of my birthday, which is this coming Saturday, has dwindled largely because I have a big talk to give on Sunday and I'm probably going to spend much of the happy day just preparing for it.

But then while I was working this afternoon, another professor in the department came to ask me a question about a freshman who was considering dropping his major, for this specific science that I study and teach, to just the "General Science" degree. This ultimately led the student (who is in my lab) to come talk to me, and I gave him my two cents, and helped him figure out what he should do for his major. He actually wants to do something else entirely, possibly, and was going to double major in general science in addition to this other major, to give himself more leverage in his future prospects.

I basically told him that he shouldn't drop the current major just yet, since all of the classes he could take in the fall would work for all degrees he's considering, and may allow him to change his mind.

After he left, I felt spectacular. I don't know if I really helped, but I think I did, and I feel as though he really appreciated it. I think in the end that he was happy that I spent that much time thinking about it with him, and of course I had to figure out the details of the majors and requirements, which I did in real time while he was here. It made me realize that I could very easily be a student advisor already without having any real knowledge of what is required out there.

But in the end, it cheered me up because I was doing what I honestly felt like I was made to do. It put a positive spin on an otherwise dreary day. I don't think it's a coincidence that the sun came out shortly after that little meeting.

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* Although we had an awesome weekend shopping at Macy's, going to the Bronx Zoo, and seeing "Company" at the Philharmonic Saturday night, so I can't complain that much.

Get used to it

I have to get used to the fact that there will regularly be students that I'm not a fan of. Of course there are those with personality clashes, and that will happen with all students. But then there are students that for a particular reason just annoy me, and that is because they are high maintenance.

Last fall there was a student that was very much like this and quite honestly, I was glad to not have to deal with him, much. He had questions on ever little detail (all the way to "what kind of calculator should I bring to lab?"), and some of it was being diligent, but other parts of it where him just being over paranoid about the grade. (It's a lab, for crying out loud!) But since he wasn't in my section, only sometimes did I have to deal with him. Sadly, he had to drop the lab for personal reasons, and so after that I had to deal with him no more.

Until next fall. I just noticed he registered for my section of the lab. Sigh.