Overworked and Underpaid.
It's not just true as a Community Director, or within the Office of Residence Life, or anywhere at my University. It is a phrase that could be applied to any of a million employees in America, or any of the billions around the globe. Working for someone else means that they will always put their expectations onto you, will always think that you're there only to pick up someone else's slack, and that you enjoy doing it.
Well that's not entirely true. Most don't care if you enjoy it or not.
I'm thinking about this because of the purpose of this meeting. It is a recent edict of "the higher-ups" that the Director of each residence hall needs to begin planning a course to be taught beginning this academic year.
WHAT? Yeah, I know...
There's nothing in my job description that said I would be teaching anything. When I went online, the only mention that I could find of Resident Directors teaching classes was as part of a study abroad program. As a Community Director, I officially manage a building. In managing that building I take care of and help provide for the growth of the residents within that building. My supervisor and his supervisors have taken that to mean a lot of things that it doesn't mean at at least 80% of the universities around the nation. We certainly do more than the Resident Directors at every other university in the District. I know this because I looked it up.
Really, there's a lot that I put up with simply because I don't care, or I don't think that it's really asking all that much of me. You want me to chaperone something put on by another department? That's fine. You want me to coordinate a weeklong activity that by rights should be handled by another office on campus? You know, whatever. But now you want me to facilitate/teach a class. Here I have to lodge a protest.
This is a department that has not given even a COLA (cost of living adjustment) in as long as I can remember. This is a department that makes us fight for raises and gives quite the clear implicit (yeah, I know...) statement that not everyone will receive, despite all the extra work that is always forced upon us. And now you want us to teach a class.
Sadly, this is not to say that I did not go along, that I railed against the machine and protested at the top of my lungs. I did. I designed a class just like I was told to do, because I know that some people would just use this as an excuse to either write me up or get rid of me altogether. Trust me, I know the problems my mouth can get me into. Having a job that under pays me is infinitely better than having no job at all.
As my colleagues finally begin to shuffle in, I end this post, with a clear understanding of something I once said to someone. "The longer I work here, the more clearly I understand that I need to be somewhere else."
Legal Note: Opinions in this post are my own and not representative of the university I work for or the people I work under. All suppositions, presumptions, theories, hypotheses, etc. are my own. This blog is for entertainment purposes only, blah blah blah. There are purposely no names included in this post, and I have revealed nothing that violates either general expectations of privacy or the University confidentiality agreement, which, actually... I never signed anyway. All of that is to say...don't be trying to sue me.
