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.