Monday, January 25, 2016

Data Entry

It seems like there's a lot of stuff these days that faculty do that we didn't used to do.  For example, instead of emailing an admin assistant our list of books for ordering, we do the data entry into the bookstore thingy (whatever that thingy is, who knows).

It's cheaper for the university, I guess, because we faculty folks just add the extra 15-30 minutes to our work and our pay doesn't change, but the admin assistant has been moved out of our department to elsewhere (a good promotion for her, for sure) and the new person doesn't get nearly as many hours.

Was there ever a time when faculty didn't type or produce their own syllabi?  (What about before typewriters?  Where there even syllabi?  I wonder how things got communicated without easily replicated handouts?  Verbally?)

Or assignments?  I know a friend from grad school who'd gone to Oxbridge, who'd never had to type his essays there.  Do they now, or do they still handwrite them?  (In my own undergrad experience, we were expected to type everything but exams or math homework, and that was 5+ years before I went to grad school and met that friend, but who knows.)

Anyway, it seems like there's all sorts of stuff where at one point we faculty folks would hand in a handwritten form, and then someone else would do whatever was done, and that would be it.  So, for example, at one point, I could hand in my receipts and a hand written travel form, and then a month or two later, there would be a check in an envelop in my box.  Now I have to enter all sorts of information in a form before I can buy tickets, then enter everything into a different form after I buy tickets but before I travel, and then enter everything into a still different form and then send in all my receipts separately to get reimbursed.  (Yes, we have an especially inefficient system, it seems.)

***

Classes started today.  My Shakespeare students laughed generously at my jokes.  My first year writing students mostly contributed when I asked.  And for some reason, I ended up writing a time line of Western European history from 300 BCE to 2000 on the board in my seminar.  (I was trying to get them to see what the Renaissance thought it was the rebirth of, so that they can understand what a "Renaissance man" was, so that they can understand how Henry Louis Gates is using a quotation from an essay that argues against the sorts of diversity Gates supports/ed in MLA conferences.  So now my students at least know that Rome was sacked and that Petrarch had something to do with the Renaissance in that massively oversimplified way that trying to cover two thousand plus years of history in 15 minutes will do.)

Altogether, this was a very good day in ways that had to do with classes, with colleagues, and with pretty much everything.  And now it's time to go home and recharge!

7 comments:

  1. So true on the faculty time issue -- I used to call an office if I had a wasp nest or lightbulb out. Now I enter an online system to report the issue, which generates a ticket, which generates follow up, which eventually generates a light bulb or exterminator. This office, and many others, now send faculty regular newsletters, so that we can better ready ourselves for their interfaces and policies. I deal with a horrible online interface to check off credit card receipts, and then inevitably get a note from the business office to please call Amazon about that .07 tax on the order. Many offices on campus used to *do* their work, but now their work is to train us to do it ourselves. Meanwhile, the buck stops here. When students want a letter of reference, or colleges an external reviewer, I can't farm those out to anyone; I just have to find time in between my lightbulb reporting and tax refunding.

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  2. When I was first teaching, the secretary would, if you got it done early enough, type up your syllabus and copy it. She (always she, of course) would also type mss. For faculty. If I need something copies now, I do it, unless I have a research assistant I will take advantage of. I think I miss the copying the most.

    Yay for the timeline!

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    1. Yep, always a she. I remember that pretty much all the academic books written 1990 would thank the male writer's wife for typing it.

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  3. I spent a stupid amount of time today making copies of quiz slips (4 to a page) for my humanities class. Since there are eight quizzes in the semester, and there are 191 students in the two sections, the 400 quiz slips that I copied and cut aren't going to last long. :( I said to hubby tonight, "I really didn't get a PhD to waste my time cutting quiz slips." And yet, here we are.

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    1. Yep, but sometimes it's easier to do a task myself than to explain it to a student worker and then go back and forth from the office to get it. (We do have student workers who will do our copying if we fill out a form. But I'm far enough from the office that if there's no wait, I usually make my copies because it takes longer to walk back and forth again to get the copies than to walk, make copies, and return to my office.)

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    2. I make those slips (or a version of them) myself for the same reason: it's faster than filling out the form and waiting for it to be done.

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  4. But yes--choosing books, finding the ISBN somewhere else, entering them into the bookstore form: that's an hour, easy, of time that I'm not spending doing something that the university says it values more. It's invisible work, and it counts the same in their eyes as if I were hanging out doing nothing.

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