The Venting Thread

[clean]

Not to divert the Venting...
I always have issues with effect and affect...


to ENSURE you dont keep making payments on a wrecked car, you INSURE it!

Ensure - guarantee
Insure - protect from financial loss

[Juvenal]

Not to divert the Venting...
I always have issues with effect and affect...


to ENSURE you dont keep making payments on a wrecked car, you INSURE it!

Ensure - guarantee
Insure - protect from financial loss

Yes.  Two noun versions, two verb versions.  Just try to effect proper usage.

[science.expat]

Not to divert the Venting...
I always have issues with effect and affect...


to ENSURE you dont keep making payments on a wrecked car, you INSURE it!

Ensure - guarantee
Insure - protect from financial loss

Yes.  Two noun versions, two verb versions.  Just try to effect proper usage.

😊

[ergative]

Not to divert the Venting...
I always have issues with effect and affect...


to ENSURE you dont keep making payments on a wrecked car, you INSURE it!

Ensure - guarantee
Insure - protect from financial loss

Yes.  Two noun versions, two verb versions.  Just try to effect proper usage.

😊

That's the happy affect I like to see!

[downer]

Schools seem to suppose that if they make faculty have a pull down menu for each student when doing enrollment verification, that will make professors less likely to just put "yes" for everyone.

But in fact it's the other way around. If you make my life harder in filling out the online form, I will be less likely to check on who is actually in class.

[Aster]

The people at the Testing Center stapled the scantron to the exam hardcopy. They're supposed to use paper clips, and they've always used paper clips. Heck, they paper-clipped another one of my student's exam just fine today. But this other exam got The Staple.

Even after carefully removing the staple, the scantron machine wouldn't feed the damaged scantron. So I wasted 10 minutes manually grading someone's exam.

One lousy staple did this. But I feel better now after complaining about it here.

Nice thread.

[sinenomine]

One of the administrators I work with is obsessive about holding meetings — to the point that our calendars get so filled, we don't have time for our work. He reached out to a few of us recently about scheduling a meeting with various departments, and the admin tasked with scheduling it circled back today with a few times that could work. The meeting-obsessed administrator then asked what this meeting was about and who initiated it. I wanted to scream, YOU, YOU IDIOT!!

Boy was I was happy to leave campus early and come home to pour myself an adult beverage.

[Aster]

Before one of my mentors retired, she had the most lovely saying about the college administration.

"All Meetings, All the Time."

[the_geneticist]

One of the administrators I work with is obsessive about holding meetings — to the point that our calendars get so filled, we don't have time for our work. He reached out to a few of us recently about scheduling a meeting with various departments, and the admin tasked with scheduling it circled back today with a few times that could work. The meeting-obsessed administrator then asked what this meeting was about and who initiated it. I wanted to scream, YOU, YOU IDIOT!!

Boy was I was happy to leave campus early and come home to pour myself an adult beverage.

I'm at the other extreme. My chair is so meeting adverse that we almost NEVER have meetings, even when there are things like, oh, a sudden switch to online teaching due to a pandemic.
I'd like a happy medium.  Regular meetings when there is something important to discuss.

[Aster]

One of the administrators I work with is obsessive about holding meetings — to the point that our calendars get so filled, we don't have time for our work. He reached out to a few of us recently about scheduling a meeting with various departments, and the admin tasked with scheduling it circled back today with a few times that could work. The meeting-obsessed administrator then asked what this meeting was about and who initiated it. I wanted to scream, YOU, YOU IDIOT!!

Boy was I was happy to leave campus early and come home to pour myself an adult beverage.

I'm at the other extreme. My chair is so meeting adverse that we almost NEVER have meetings, even when there are things like, oh, a sudden switch to online teaching due to a pandemic.
I'd like a happy medium.  Regular meetings when there is something important to discuss.

+1.
People who hold meetings all the time = people choosing to not do the work themselves
People not holding meetings ever = people choosing to not do the work themselves

Both of these categories of people suck.

[ciao_yall]

I got passed over for an internal promotion. NBD, on paper, the new guy was more qualified. I took a lateral and looked forward to learning a lot.

New guy was a bit quirky but whatever. It is now official that he is a complete nutcase. He hasn't stopped me from doing my own job but he disrupted a meeting when we were discussing our quarterly report asking why some reports are labeled "Q" and some are labelled "A."

He went on to ask why when we pull the report for our second quarter report we selected "Fiscal Period 6." Because it's the second quarter report, so why don't we pull Period 2? And why is Period 6 December, shouldn't that be Period 12?

Finally he went on a rant about how IT is so stupid, then asked the accountant who was recording the meeting to go back and erase that.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Why do we have to do this today? I have just lost 2 hours of my life.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

WTF? I just found out that my prescription is on back order (and has been for about 3 months). Of course I'm running out in a few days. Didn't anticipate this...

[Parasaurolophus]

If you want to know why instructors don't enforce the Academic Integrity Policy more rigorously, the likely answer should be obvious: although we technically aren't adjuncts, we're paid by the course, our course loads aren't guaranteed, and courses are capped at 35 and get cancelled when they dip below 27. Under those circumstances, nobody can afford to drive students away by having a reputation as a stickler.

[Harlow2]

Super anxious doctoral student just asked me to "bump up" up her grade on a take-home open book  quiz she won't take until next week.
All semester I've been reassuring her that she is doing fine, but this is wearying.