Flashes of Panic

I don’t think the division of labor has been done very well. It’s hard for me to complain, because I don’t want to seem like I can’t keep up, and I don’t want to be a whiner. But the fact is that I’m being paid for five hours for TAing, and I’m working something closer to ten. (Part of the problem here is that I’m too responsible. If I see work that needs doing, I do it, I don’t “work to rule.”) Meanwhile, I’m being paid for thirteen hours for the GA, and I’m lucky if I can find ten to give them in a given week. You can see that the math isn’t working here.

I don’t have a nagging conscience about this, because my paycheck comes from the same place and I’m definitely earning it. But mismanagement in one department is definitely causing me to short-change another, and it’s pinching me elsewhere, too.

I’m not the only one in this boat, but an unfortunate incident last week has neutralized my colleague; he’s no longer in a position to put up much fight.

I hope I can find a diplomatic way to iron this out—without suggesting flat-out to a senior professor that I could manage TA’s better than they can, not to mention run meetings more efficiently—before next semester, because it looks possible that the same assignments will be in place then. But if need be, I may have to go to the graduate committee with it; I think this is the first year they’ve tried this fractional arrangement, and they’ll need to know how it can go wrong.