Classes start next week, so so I need to start getting my schedule back on track, which means I’m going to be in the lab every day at 9am. Summer’s over. Sorry, everyone.
So I walk into my office…after taking care of the spiders, of course…and what do I find in my u email? Another indigestible lump of text from one of the offices on campus that I’m supposed to add to my syllabus. It’s out of control. It’s ridiculous.
Can I volunteer for a committee that collects and collates all this absurd, ever-accumulating pile of what are basically inter-office memos that we are expected to append to all of our teaching materials? Here’s what I’d do: every summer, compile them to a linkable master file on a university website, and provide one line, a link, that everyone can add to their syllabus. Done and dusted. Two other things I’d do:
- Provide a link so the people who create these things could submit revisions, which would be reviewed the following summer.
- Set a deadline: the file is locked and unchangeable after, say, 1 August. You want to add more? You can’t do it the week before classes, and you have to submit it the Commissar of Syllabus Bloat, not to the campus wide listserv, who will put it in a queue to be dealt with 9 or 10 months later.
I think it’s safe to volunteer for this committee, since it doesn’t exist, and no way would the bureaucrats consent to submit to a policy that would constrain their advertising. Also, administrators don’t read my blog, it’s far too scary for them.