Friday, September 19, 2014

In the event you are assigned to a committee...

Hey! Everyone!

If you're a member of a committee, no matter at what level, do your shit on time.

What happens to you if you don't? Well, nothing. And you still get to put on your CV that you served because, really, who's going to check? Especially if you're tenured and stuff.

But if you don't do said shit on time, or you do a quarter-assed job of it, and if said work has hard deadlines, then you know what happens?

Do you?

Answer: The chair of the freaking committee does all the work you didn't. Yea, even if it means that she's up in the office until 7 p.m. on a Friday, two hours after declining invites from friendly colleagues for end-of-week, post-faculty-research-seminar drinks and socializing, because she's making sure everything gets done.

Or so I've heard.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

my one completely assholic colleague advised me early in my career to do a crappy job on all committee work; it had worked for him, he said, in that he was no longer assigned committee work.

Susan said...

yes, you get a reputation. And it may save you committee work, but it means that ultimately you stop getting credit for the service.

Belle said...

Susan's right. My two Dinosaurs are now knee deep in report writing, and flailing. They've not done anything for 30 years, and they're finding themselves feeling incompetent. And there's no one this time (as I'm out of the picture) to clean up their messes. So the AssDean is doing it, and zip isn't as patient as I was. Or as gullible. So it does catch up to the shirkers, it just may take a looooonnnnng time.

Comradde PhysioProffe said...

Those faculty who shirk service do fine so long as their research (and teaching, at institutions that care about it) is top notch. But if your research program starts to decline, they are getting a lot less institutional leeway than faculty who have been team players, and can be made to suffer.

Susan said...

Belle, the ass dean -even as jet hat level - has institutional power a colleague could never have. (And it's good to see you - I've worrying about you.)