As I'm sure you've noticed, I've been very frustrated with my job and this department. I just feel like a puppet - I'm being told what to do and I have no say in how to supervise my RAs or how to run my building. I'm basically asked not to think - and I work in EDUCATION!!!
I said something to our director about roommate conflicts and how I don't think students should be sent straight to our assignment person and he responded that he just wanted to take this "administrative" task away from the Area Coordinator. WHAT??? Since when are roommate conflicts an administrative task? Well, they are, if you don't do any mediation and just let students move whenever they want.
Anyway - so last week, at our regular RA in-service (extra training sessions every other Friday), we wanted to do a Town Hall Meeting to get the RAs' feedback about the RA position and their experience. But the speakers before (our Assistant Director and Associate Director) went over [going over stuff that we could have easily discussed in a staff meeting, but that's a whole other story...my staff was super frustrated though]....so we finally get to the end of their presentation and there's 15 minutes left. I ask our Assistant Director if we should just skip the Town Hall Meeting and do it some other time when we'll actually have a significant amount of time for it - but oh no, I was told that we'd just get started anyway. It really felt like she just wanted to get it over with. And instead of just letting us get started, she gives this whole speech on how we don't want complaining but only constructive feedback and how there are certain things about the job that will never change. Then we break up into smaller groups. I look at my watch. There's barely 10 minutes left. I just right into it and the RAs had a lot to say. Initially I tried to stick with the questions we'd come up with but with the limited amount of time that really didn't work. So I just opened up the table for discussion and let them talk. At 4 pm, I told the RAs they could leave if they wanted to but that I'd stick around if they had more feedback to share. And several of them did....
Two days later, I went to dinner with two of my RAs and we ended up talking a little bit about the Town Hall Meeting. They were frustrated that it'd been so short. One of them also shared that since she'd been in the group facilitated by our Assistant Director, she didn't feel comfortable sharing any of her feedback - especially because after that little speech our Assistant Director gave.
And here comes the best moment....
Some of the RAs brought up that they wanted there to be more consistency (as if we don't have enough departmental rules already...argh) - the biggest complaint is that some halls have to change door decs more often than others and that the deadlines for bulletin boards and door decs aren't the same. Who cares!?!?! So my RA goes, "Well, if everything was exactly the same in every building, then we wouldn't even need Area Coordinators. The department could just tell us what to do and that'd be it."
Wow. He couldn't have said it any better. That's EXACTLY how I've been feeling already - with all the consistency and rules and policies that we have. Why am I here???? And why did I get a Master's degree when I'm not allowed to use any of the knowledge and experience I've gained???
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Do you think institutional type has anything to do with how you're feeling in this job? What type of institution were you at before? It sounds like now you may be at a public research institution, which tend to have more beaurocracy. If you haven't read it before, I highly recommend Where You Work Matters, by Hirt, which goes over a lot characteristics and how things work at different higher ed institutions. (And I'm not the author. I just love this book and read it early on in my program, and it really clarified for me exactly which types of schools I would want to work at)
ReplyDeleteHang in there!
It's funny because I've actually only worked at public institutions. My grad school was a research one institution; my first full-time job at a public institution (but one that's very focused on undergraduate education; also a very academically focused school) and now i'm at a public one that's draws a lot of students from the area.
ReplyDeleteSo bureaucracy doesn't necessarily bother me but I believe in ResLife we have a responsibility to bring the small-school-feel to a public institution. I've been able to do that at our past two institutions; don't really feel like I'm able to do that here.