Tighten your belts!

I knew this would be coming. We just got an email from our university asking us to respond to a suggestion to temporarily reduce faculty salaries. So, at the same time we’re expected to work even harder to maintain our commitments, we’re also asked to take a pay cut.

We must be thoughtful, fair, and equitable as we consider financial strategies, and we believe that a temporary reduction in the compensation for faculty must be considered. The FCC [Faculty Consultative Committee] is mindful of the extensive workloads and expectations put on faculty, and that many of us are stretched thin by our obligations and our own financial circumstances, but we are also mindful of those whose employment is threatened. We also support including in the proposal a sliding scale, reflecting the diverse circumstances of different categories of faculty, which is consistent with the requirement that any temporary reduction be “allocated to faculty in accordance with a mathematical formula or similar device.”

OK, I’m willing to accept a pay cut in order to prevent the university from simply firing any of my colleagues (which is partly a selfish decision on my part, because losing anyone would mean I’d have to work harder). I’m missing some information here, though.

  • What “mathematical formula”? That sounds sciencey, but a mathematical formula could be anything. Be specific.
  • I notice that all of the cuts are to faculty pay. I’d be much more supportive if the administration led by example and told us first what kind of salary reduction they’re taking right now.

Interestingly, they also note in their letter that the cuts only apply to non-union faculty. Do we now have an incentive to unionize, finally? If I were a member of a union that similarly agreed to temporary pay reductions, at least I’d be satisfied that I was represented by people who were making choices to benefit me and my peers. As it is, our watchdogs for our self-interests are…the administration.

Spider game!

We’re getting desperate. The American Arachnological Society sent me an email from Gordana Grbic containing a spider game to play at home! In Serbian! I was so excited that I had to try it. Here are the rules:

Hello everyone
I hope you are OK, and negative on this virus… and I hope you will stay that way… :)

We made a little spider game video (roll and draw a spider), that I would like to share with our community. I think it would bring some fun in our houses.

This game is best to play in 3, but it could be more or less participants. Every participant has to have its own table. With every roll of dice you can draw one body part. You roll the dice one by one. The goal of the game is to draw 4 complete spiders faster than others. See the video.
The table is in Serbian language, but that is not a problem, since you all know the body parts of the spider. However, here is a translation:
1. glava-grudi = cephalothorax
2. stomak = abdomen
3. pedipalpi = pedipalps
4. helicere = chelicerae
5. noge = legs
6. slobodan izbor = free choice

The table you can find at web site of Spiders of Serbia at this link http://www.paukovisrbije.com/index.php/download/igre-za-decu .

If you think that this email will help, please share it with other members of AAS. and of course, correct my English before sharing :).

Link to a video about the game: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=692905371450199

Wait. It’s a competitive game? I need a partner? The cat refused. I even told her she could learn a little Serbian playing it, but she still turned me down, saying she already knew Serbian and was always talking to me in that language anyway.

Maybe you’ll have better luck finding a partner. Slobodan izbor!

Urgent note to the warden

You win. I’m cracking. Don’t you know solitary confinement is a cruel punishment?

I confess to everything. I robbed that bank. I’ll tell you where I hid the money. I’ll rat out my confederates. Just let me out to the general population again. I’ll never commit another crime, cross my heart and hope to die. I’m going mad in here!

I gotta say, though, the worst trick you pulled was assigning that sadistic brute to be the prison guard. She doesn’t talk, she only makes meaningless yowling sounds, and she occasionally runs through my cell and knocks everything over. I need to get out of here.

We’re always buried in books & papers, why are you complaining now?

Oh lord. I cringed so hard at this op-ed in Inside Higher Ed I think I might have pile-drived my cervical vertebrae right into the lumbar. Ouch. The author, Kristie Kiser, is giving advice to faculty about how to compose themselves for this new era of Zooming online.

In a world where conversations around us are terrifying, a student who has perceived Dr. Jones as a strong female role model, who is polished and eloquent at all times in the classroom, may be quite alarmed indeed to find Dr. Jones wearing her Pokémon pajamas with disheveled, unwashed hair, lamenting the added workload associated with social distancing. Your piles of unattended laundry are not trophies for the amount of time you are putting into your coursework. They are distractions, signs of disorganization and, quite frankly, unsightly and off-putting. Educators, please rethink your approach to your students. In these trying times, the last thing that they need to see is their adult, professional, highly educated instructor falling apart at the seams.

You see, if we don’t wash our hair, we’re falling apart at the seams. We’ve been driven out of our university offices, but it’s unprofessional if you post video from your bedroom. Don’t be unsightly. So what if your workload has abruptly doubled and you’ve found yourself in completely unfamiliar territory — for the honor of your institution, which is not paying you any extra for extra work, you must also perform all the superficial cosmetic stuff, because you must also look as poised and polished as if you’re appearing in the university’s recruiting brochures.

Heck, I don’t meet those standards under normal conditions. One of the painful realities of these committee meetings in zoom is that I get to see all my younger, better-looking colleagues in the gallery, and my face is also right there, to make the comparison easy to see. Yeah, I’m the homely sludge-beast squatting in the corner of your screen. I’m not brochure-quality at the best of times, and this is the worst of times. I can console myself that students are supposed to be taking in the quality of the information I can deliver, not the quality of my eyeliner nor my lean, muscular physique, but then the Pretty Police show up in the education journals, and the lies I tell myself all crumble.

Oh, well. All I’m seeing around my corner of the web is Kiser getting dunked on. See SkepChick for a complete tear-down, as deserved.

It’s been so thorough that I’m feeling sorry for Kristie Kiser. This is not to say she doesn’t deserve it, but she’s young — a doctoral student — and of an academic rank that requires guidance. Someone should have looked at that article submission, blanched, and said “You can’t possibly be planning to shame your colleagues for their appearance at this difficult time, can you?”, but instead…they published it. They might as well have nailed her up on a wall and provided baskets of stones. Now I’m wondering which would be worse: that an editor accepted it with a vicious smile and the knowledge that they’d be chumming the academic community with her blood, or that the editor actually agreed that their slovenly peers needed to be chastised. Either way, the editors were assholes and should be called out as well.

Mission accomplished

I blazed through the local grocery store and stocked up on various staples — also cat food (she snick’d her claws at me as I was going out the door, and I know what’s good for me), coffee, cheap cheese, onions, carrots, etc. I noticed that the toilet paper aisle was still an empty wasteland, which I don’t get at all; why are y’all pooping so much? Other points of absence were the dried beans, which I totally understand, that makes sense, and ramen was nearly all gone, unless you like the pork flavor.

I only saw one worker at the store wearing a mask, and no other customers were wearing one, although there weren’t very many in there at 7:30am, so that was a small sample. Now I think I can stay home for another two weeks. Only two weeks of classes left, too!

Ready to venture into the apocalyptic wasteland

Tomorrow, I’m planning on a brief excursion to the grocery store — just in and out, grabbing a few basics, and then escaping before the ‘rona gets me. But I have no mask! Skatje made me a nice shimmery green one, but she’s in Colorado under stay-at-home orders herself, and hasn’t been able to send it to me yet. So I improvised one, cut up an old t-shirt, and will line it with coffee filters. Will also wear a hat, scarf, and glasses.

I think I look like a low-budget 19th century highwayman. May hold up a coach as I assault the store, as well.