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AI2 Adapt Dev 52

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Not one of those is even close to being an \"administrative task\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Learn to say “no”.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Not one of those is even close to being an \"administrative task\"", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There will be much more admin as a tenure track faculty, unfortunately.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Welcome to academia. This is what all of your faculty are doing, in a larger scale.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I have 3 RA jobs and one teaching assistant job. Sometimes, 60%of my time in a week is just meetings, with 25% being time taken up by emails. I would say I work fulltime and do my PhD work on the side. Meetings are exhausting and draining but my jobs pay well enough. If you don't have any RAs or TAs, I'm not sure what forms you're filling out. I only have to complete one annual form related to my PhD work. Edit: just noticed your STEM flare. We probably havent different experiences, I'm in humanities", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Welcome to academia. This is what all of your faculty are doing, in a larger scale.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This sounds pretty normal, and this is even more prevalent when you become an academic or move into industry.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Welcome to academia. This is what all of your faculty are doing, in a larger scale.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Learn to say “no”.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is great that youbare thinking about time management. Im a new PI and time management is basically half of what determines our success. I would echo what people are sayingng about meetings--stitch in time saves nine and all, meetings are important. Id would consider making meetings even more important to your bench science--can you make schemes for your talks that will eventually be yohr papers graphical abstract? As you prepare for meetings can you make pub quality figures/organize your data for writing papers will be easy... can you refine your background slides e rytime to point they are pro level anx ready to use for defense? Can you use deadline of meeting to force yoursel e to reD and highlight one new key paper for literature (and write 3 line blueb with ref so your thesis and paper intro writing woll be breeze etc...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I have 3 RA jobs and one teaching assistant job. Sometimes, 60%of my time in a week is just meetings, with 25% being time taken up by emails. I would say I work fulltime and do my PhD work on the side. Meetings are exhausting and draining but my jobs pay well enough. If you don't have any RAs or TAs, I'm not sure what forms you're filling out. I only have to complete one annual form related to my PhD work. Edit: just noticed your STEM flare. We probably havent different experiences, I'm in humanities", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is great that youbare thinking about time management. Im a new PI and time management is basically half of what determines our success. I would echo what people are sayingng about meetings--stitch in time saves nine and all, meetings are important. Id would consider making meetings even more important to your bench science--can you make schemes for your talks that will eventually be yohr papers graphical abstract? As you prepare for meetings can you make pub quality figures/organize your data for writing papers will be easy... can you refine your background slides e rytime to point they are pro level anx ready to use for defense? Can you use deadline of meeting to force yoursel e to reD and highlight one new key paper for literature (and write 3 line blueb with ref so your thesis and paper intro writing woll be breeze etc...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Learn to say “no”.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This sounds pretty normal, and this is even more prevalent when you become an academic or move into industry.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I have 3 RA jobs and one teaching assistant job. Sometimes, 60%of my time in a week is just meetings, with 25% being time taken up by emails. I would say I work fulltime and do my PhD work on the side. Meetings are exhausting and draining but my jobs pay well enough. If you don't have any RAs or TAs, I'm not sure what forms you're filling out. I only have to complete one annual form related to my PhD work. Edit: just noticed your STEM flare. We probably havent different experiences, I'm in humanities", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I agree with the top comment that there's sort of a gradient of admin tasks to research tasks. Minute per minute though, definitely over a quarter of my time lately has been spent on what you count as administrative items. Maybe up to half the time, if you include all the work I do to coordinate the resources I need to collect and analyze data. I actually enjoy the admin tasks more than the research haha, at least admin tasks don't come back underpowered and insignificant :(", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I have 3 RA jobs and one teaching assistant job. Sometimes, 60%of my time in a week is just meetings, with 25% being time taken up by emails. I would say I work fulltime and do my PhD work on the side. Meetings are exhausting and draining but my jobs pay well enough. If you don't have any RAs or TAs, I'm not sure what forms you're filling out. I only have to complete one annual form related to my PhD work. Edit: just noticed your STEM flare. We probably havent different experiences, I'm in humanities", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This sounds pretty normal, and this is even more prevalent when you become an academic or move into industry.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Learn to say “no”.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I agree with the top comment that there's sort of a gradient of admin tasks to research tasks. Minute per minute though, definitely over a quarter of my time lately has been spent on what you count as administrative items. Maybe up to half the time, if you include all the work I do to coordinate the resources I need to collect and analyze data. I actually enjoy the admin tasks more than the research haha, at least admin tasks don't come back underpowered and insignificant :(", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Learn to say “no”.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I agree with the top comment that there's sort of a gradient of admin tasks to research tasks. Minute per minute though, definitely over a quarter of my time lately has been spent on what you count as administrative items. Maybe up to half the time, if you include all the work I do to coordinate the resources I need to collect and analyze data. I actually enjoy the admin tasks more than the research haha, at least admin tasks don't come back underpowered and insignificant :(", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There will be much more admin as a tenure track faculty, unfortunately.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I also keep track of my time, and here are my percentages for this year, in decreasing order. ​ * Well-defined research projects other than dissertation: 29% (yes, yes, I know. This needs to be lower next year. But this time has resulted in great collaborations and in publications.) * Preliminary research & seminar attendance: 21% (thinking/learning about things that may not be useful) * Dissertation: 18% * Service: 13% (organizing, reviewing, mentoring, etc) * Teaching: 11% (paid to do it) * Travel, presentation prep, networking: 6% * Pointless administration: 2% (still, thats about 25 hours) I think that this way of categorizing time helps to get a better idea of what's being accomplished when I send emails or prepare for meetings.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Yes. Totally normal. I hate having to jump back and forth between administrative tasks, meetings, and heads-down focused research. I have classes Tuesday / Thursday, so this quarter I worked to make all of my meetings fall on those days. I count those as my meeting days, where the only things that get done are meetings, administrative stuff, and email. M/W/F are reserved for focused research, reading, coding, and writing. That means that 40% of my week is dedicated to all the things that are not actually research that I’m still required to do.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I also keep track of my time, and here are my percentages for this year, in decreasing order. ​ * Well-defined research projects other than dissertation: 29% (yes, yes, I know. This needs to be lower next year. But this time has resulted in great collaborations and in publications.) * Preliminary research & seminar attendance: 21% (thinking/learning about things that may not be useful) * Dissertation: 18% * Service: 13% (organizing, reviewing, mentoring, etc) * Teaching: 11% (paid to do it) * Travel, presentation prep, networking: 6% * Pointless administration: 2% (still, thats about 25 hours) I think that this way of categorizing time helps to get a better idea of what's being accomplished when I send emails or prepare for meetings.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "That's high, but I also don't consider meetings or meeting prep admin because that's part of my research and important feedback about what direction to take or exposure to other ideas (for when I'm listening to someone present or journal club style meetings). I also had to learn to not spend much time drafting perfect emails because that can eat up hours and hours and profs/grad students do not care.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I also keep track of my time, and here are my percentages for this year, in decreasing order. ​ * Well-defined research projects other than dissertation: 29% (yes, yes, I know. This needs to be lower next year. But this time has resulted in great collaborations and in publications.) * Preliminary research & seminar attendance: 21% (thinking/learning about things that may not be useful) * Dissertation: 18% * Service: 13% (organizing, reviewing, mentoring, etc) * Teaching: 11% (paid to do it) * Travel, presentation prep, networking: 6% * Pointless administration: 2% (still, thats about 25 hours) I think that this way of categorizing time helps to get a better idea of what's being accomplished when I send emails or prepare for meetings.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Not that much time as a grad student, but probably 75%+ of my time as a faculty member. There is about 25% of my time left to be a scientist. Lol.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Some minor drama happened when a PI started talking AND answering questions about the research (!) during his student’s dissertation defense. PI’s are expressly not supposed to even talk during their student’s defense. Everyone was abuzz after that, but this PI has also been known to do weird things in general so I think everyone ended up shrugging their shoulders. Yes, he’s tenured.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Department chair who wants to remove all MA, MFA people from full-time NTT (not adjuncts to clarify) positions who teach lower division courses and replace them with newly minted PhDs for the same low wages, therefore diluting the actual value and work of a PhD. Oh, and the PhDs who take such positions will never have the opportunity to advance to a TT position. Ethics at it’s finest. 😒", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "There are rumors that the head of my program is leaving. The starter of those rumors? The head of my program.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Some minor drama happened when a PI started talking AND answering questions about the research (!) during his student’s dissertation defense. PI’s are expressly not supposed to even talk during their student’s defense. Everyone was abuzz after that, but this PI has also been known to do weird things in general so I think everyone ended up shrugging their shoulders. Yes, he’s tenured.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Department chair who wants to remove all MA, MFA people from full-time NTT (not adjuncts to clarify) positions who teach lower division courses and replace them with newly minted PhDs for the same low wages, therefore diluting the actual value and work of a PhD. Oh, and the PhDs who take such positions will never have the opportunity to advance to a TT position. Ethics at it’s finest. 😒", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "We have two pregnancies, both due in May, and are planning concurrent/separate baby showers.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Some minor drama happened when a PI started talking AND answering questions about the research (!) during his student’s dissertation defense. PI’s are expressly not supposed to even talk during their student’s defense. Everyone was abuzz after that, but this PI has also been known to do weird things in general so I think everyone ended up shrugging their shoulders. Yes, he’s tenured.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Department chair who wants to remove all MA, MFA people from full-time NTT (not adjuncts to clarify) positions who teach lower division courses and replace them with newly minted PhDs for the same low wages, therefore diluting the actual value and work of a PhD. Oh, and the PhDs who take such positions will never have the opportunity to advance to a TT position. Ethics at it’s finest. 😒", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Interesting question. I study in JMI, New Delhi, its minority status university in India. A month ago police entered the library and lathi-charged on students. Students were protesting against an act passed by parliament which discriminates on the basis of religion. Exams where suspended for more than a month. The cases has been filed against the police and the protest still boils hot. I hope that's not too much.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama here. I'm in a smaller faculty, so we don't have a department chair only a dean (we'll call them Dean X). Dean X's current term is almost up and they are at the maximum number of terms that my school usually allows. Dean X has a couple of minions who have been campaigning to faculty members for another term and two of them even went to the provost. Little does Dean X know...there's an internal candidate gunning for the job that is backed by basically every single female faculty member and a few of the junior male faculty who are sick of the Dean's favoritism of a few people.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Department chair who wants to remove all MA, MFA people from full-time NTT (not adjuncts to clarify) positions who teach lower division courses and replace them with newly minted PhDs for the same low wages, therefore diluting the actual value and work of a PhD. Oh, and the PhDs who take such positions will never have the opportunity to advance to a TT position. Ethics at it’s finest. 😒", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Our Department was officially shut down! Reduced to a MA only Program and faculty dispersed throughout other departments. Embarrassing. Largely a product of an ultra conservative \"run the University like a business\" President, but also certainly due to a Department that was mired in political divisions and poor job placement after graduation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Interesting question. I study in JMI, New Delhi, its minority status university in India. A month ago police entered the library and lathi-charged on students. Students were protesting against an act passed by parliament which discriminates on the basis of religion. Exams where suspended for more than a month. The cases has been filed against the police and the protest still boils hot. I hope that's not too much.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I am responsible for performance reviews in our department. Our Dean decided to add another form which rates each person on teaching, research and service with one number out of 3 for each based on very simple criteria, not taking into account proportions of the above, seniority etc. I disagreed with design of ratings but was overruled and went ahead and rated everyone while doing their other university-sanctioned performance reviews. Turned them in and was told I had to remove any \"excellent\" ratings as \"It won't motivate them to do better\". So now I am in the position of handing back forms that tell my staff that someone who comes in really early, puts in huge amounts of extra time and creates 150+ small videos to help students understand concepts (and gets great student satisfaction) gets an \"acceptable - just doing your job\" and so does someone else who turns up and delivers the same old material for the last 10 years and does nothing to keep current. I anticipate resignations, very unhappy people and a drop in overall performance. Shit is going to hit the fan.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I see your petty stories and I raise it: two lecturers are sharing an office, X loves it extra warm and stole a third (3) heater from another office, Y loves it much colder and ratted on X to the building manager regarding where that heater came from. The admin person who lost their heater is also super annoyed and thats all they talk about.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The phd student on long-term sick leave, and supposedly too weak for months to come to the lab, posted photos on insta of herself getting drunk during a night out.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Interesting question. I study in JMI, New Delhi, its minority status university in India. A month ago police entered the library and lathi-charged on students. Students were protesting against an act passed by parliament which discriminates on the basis of religion. Exams where suspended for more than a month. The cases has been filed against the police and the protest still boils hot. I hope that's not too much.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Interesting question. I study in JMI, New Delhi, its minority status university in India. A month ago police entered the library and lathi-charged on students. Students were protesting against an act passed by parliament which discriminates on the basis of religion. Exams where suspended for more than a month. The cases has been filed against the police and the protest still boils hot. I hope that's not too much.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Interesting question. I study in JMI, New Delhi, its minority status university in India. A month ago police entered the library and lathi-charged on students. Students were protesting against an act passed by parliament which discriminates on the basis of religion. Exams where suspended for more than a month. The cases has been filed against the police and the protest still boils hot. I hope that's not too much.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Old chair finally stepped down last semester and a new chair got appointed. All but one faculty approved of the choice. The one faculty member opposing the appointment had been at the school for a decade longer than the new chair and apparently believes they stripped him of his honor because the chair is a woman (despite him also being a minority in our field). To get back at her, he took a position at a different local university over the winter holidays without informing anyone, hoping to make her scramble to find an instructor for the mandatory introductory master's level course he was supposed to be teaching in the spring. The one person he eventually told was his TA for the course (with whom he had a meeting scheduled the day of informing), who immediately reached out to the chair, giving the chair a week to find a new professor to teach the course before he turned in his immediate notice the day before the semester started. Oh, and he isn't responding to questions about course material or anything else he left behind. It's been his course for many years. It's terrible.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "PI has a chronic illness that incapacitates them for 4-6 weeks every 6-12 months. Totally at random, no warning at all. Same PI insists on supervising all their grad students in the lab, and forbids them from even going in when PI is off sick, unless they are in constant text based contact while in there. Slows everyone's research to a grinding halt, then it takes another couple of weeks to get caught up when PI comes back. PI is not open to suggestions that there may be a better way to manage this, ie let students have a bit more autonomy, maybe stop committing to every single project that crops up, have some trusted people in the lab who can take over temporarily...", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Former grad student was given a masters degree despite not finishing their comprehensive exam in its entirety. Department had to completely change the comprehensive exam after the fact because a *lot* of grads found out and were pissed.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Well, not my department, but a neighboring one just had the head arrested by the feds for lying about his connections to the Chinese government. Meanwhile, my entire department (and a bunch of others) are moving to a new building in the summer, so that's utter chaos. Also, my advisor is so sick of the university's bullshit that she's trying to leave. Which means I'm on a clock to defend before that happens.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A year ago we had a professor take a shit in the stairwell as he was getting fired for harassing students and LGBQT members of the community. Crazy thing is there was a grad student who was caught choking people and making death threats so for a while we didn't know which one of the psychos did the deed. Thankfully they are both gone now.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "New Provost shows up and wants to change how we do tenure and promotion and wants departments to create clear criteria for tenure (most think that is good). Makes it very clear departments know their discipline best and they should set the standards. We spend a semester working on them, voting, etc. The Dean says he will not support what we proposed and the Provost called a last minute special meeting to basically say the same thing. The Dean says he will not support lowering standards. The problem is, the entire tenure process is changing. Before, we rated candidates, and the informal guidance was around excellence (get X number of publications to get a top rating). Now, we are changing to an up/down system, so we are now defining the floor (you must get at least X number of pubs). But the Dean is still stuck on the old guidelines saying anything less is lower standards. So we showed them guidelines from peer institutions to show our recommendations are in line. They didn't care. We argued the institution does not support faculty research. Their response, if there is something we need for research, then we should ask, after all, if we have higher standards for research, the administration should give us more resources (little cart before the horse). We pointed out that we just came off of a 4 year budget crisis and the first thing that was cut was the university internal grant program, the second was faculty conference travel, and the third was any and all course releases. Plus 4 years without raises means people have been teaching more summer classes to make up for lost income so that has hurt research productivity. If we vote in these higher standards, then they are in our bylaws and they don't change next time the administration wants to raid the grant program. Neither the Dean or Provost will say exactly what they want, just that they cannot support our recommendation. What they are clearly doing is trying to frustrate us to have us just guess at what they want with a higher number, therefore it would be on the faculty, not the administrators (don't complain, it was your idea). Whispers of a no-confidence vote for our dean have started.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Bigger drama, Consolidation of multi campus university. We've had a long period of massive expansion of the number of students thanks to baby boomers, plus an expansion in public sector financing. Now, enrollments are low and state is pushing for consolidation.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "They're doing Lend Me a Tenor but I think that's technically a comedy.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I am responsible for performance reviews in our department. Our Dean decided to add another form which rates each person on teaching, research and service with one number out of 3 for each based on very simple criteria, not taking into account proportions of the above, seniority etc. I disagreed with design of ratings but was overruled and went ahead and rated everyone while doing their other university-sanctioned performance reviews. Turned them in and was told I had to remove any \"excellent\" ratings as \"It won't motivate them to do better\". So now I am in the position of handing back forms that tell my staff that someone who comes in really early, puts in huge amounts of extra time and creates 150+ small videos to help students understand concepts (and gets great student satisfaction) gets an \"acceptable - just doing your job\" and so does someone else who turns up and delivers the same old material for the last 10 years and does nothing to keep current. I anticipate resignations, very unhappy people and a drop in overall performance. Shit is going to hit the fan.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A teacher was more or less asked to leave his job after leading a course module that stirred controversy. The fun thing is that more than 80% of students taking the course rated the module as \"the best part of our entire program\" or \"extremely enlightening\", while a tiny number of students (10ish %) felt offended and went complaining to the administration. Interesting times.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "Adjunct “Ted” is the reason we have “decoy” department parties that no one comes to, and then secret fun ones without him. He gets wasted and goes off on racist and/or sexually explicit rants. (He’s a POC and says this makes it okay.) He gives the women lingering hugs and congratulates those of us who “chose brown men” as our spouses. He calls other POC “stupid” for not starting race-related arguments in the intro non-majors survey course. Ted quit a FT gig to come live in this city with “Jen,” the department coordinator. Following their inevitable, explosive breakup, Ted sent a drunken rant about Jen to the college president, VP, and deans. After a tense year of Ted being passive-aggressively “helpful” (obnoxious), Jen quit without warning the week before school started this past August. Now we’re holding the search to replace Jen, and Ted has already let us know that he’s 1. initiating a discrimination complaint against the dean for not responding to his emails, and 2. applying for Jen’s former job and will sue if he’s not hired. Even if he weren’t a toxic psycho, he’s not the right person for the job just based on experience, and I wish I could tell him to go ahead and sue now so we can get that shit dismissed and not have to come in during the summer to deal with it. You may be wondering why Ted still gets classes in our department. I’m not sure, but I suspect a combination of inertia and passing the buck. Fun fact: I’ll be coordinator next year and I have no problem cutting Ted loose. He’s welcome to file his specious Title IX and/or racial discrimination complaint against me. I volunteer as tribute and dare a motherfucker to ask me the real reason why Ted doesn’t work here anymore. It’s not gossip if it’s a deposition, Ted.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The phd student on long-term sick leave, and supposedly too weak for months to come to the lab, posted photos on insta of herself getting drunk during a night out.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A teacher was more or less asked to leave his job after leading a course module that stirred controversy. The fun thing is that more than 80% of students taking the course rated the module as \"the best part of our entire program\" or \"extremely enlightening\", while a tiny number of students (10ish %) felt offended and went complaining to the administration. Interesting times.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "This started when I was in grad school and is ongoing. The Chair of a very rigorous and popular program stopped renewing the contracts of NTT and started offering them to his friends, who would teach \\*for free.\\* I TA'd for one of them. He was a disaster. He had taken the very class he was \"teaching\" and had received a C. He didn't offer office hours because he worked for free and didn't feel like it was fair to ask him to come in an extra two hours a week to do so, especially since he had to pay for parking.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A teacher was more or less asked to leave his job after leading a course module that stirred controversy. The fun thing is that more than 80% of students taking the course rated the module as \"the best part of our entire program\" or \"extremely enlightening\", while a tiny number of students (10ish %) felt offended and went complaining to the administration. Interesting times.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I am responsible for performance reviews in our department. Our Dean decided to add another form which rates each person on teaching, research and service with one number out of 3 for each based on very simple criteria, not taking into account proportions of the above, seniority etc. I disagreed with design of ratings but was overruled and went ahead and rated everyone while doing their other university-sanctioned performance reviews. Turned them in and was told I had to remove any \"excellent\" ratings as \"It won't motivate them to do better\". So now I am in the position of handing back forms that tell my staff that someone who comes in really early, puts in huge amounts of extra time and creates 150+ small videos to help students understand concepts (and gets great student satisfaction) gets an \"acceptable - just doing your job\" and so does someone else who turns up and delivers the same old material for the last 10 years and does nothing to keep current. I anticipate resignations, very unhappy people and a drop in overall performance. Shit is going to hit the fan.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I am responsible for performance reviews in our department. Our Dean decided to add another form which rates each person on teaching, research and service with one number out of 3 for each based on very simple criteria, not taking into account proportions of the above, seniority etc. I disagreed with design of ratings but was overruled and went ahead and rated everyone while doing their other university-sanctioned performance reviews. Turned them in and was told I had to remove any \"excellent\" ratings as \"It won't motivate them to do better\". So now I am in the position of handing back forms that tell my staff that someone who comes in really early, puts in huge amounts of extra time and creates 150+ small videos to help students understand concepts (and gets great student satisfaction) gets an \"acceptable - just doing your job\" and so does someone else who turns up and delivers the same old material for the last 10 years and does nothing to keep current. I anticipate resignations, very unhappy people and a drop in overall performance. Shit is going to hit the fan.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "I am responsible for performance reviews in our department. Our Dean decided to add another form which rates each person on teaching, research and service with one number out of 3 for each based on very simple criteria, not taking into account proportions of the above, seniority etc. I disagreed with design of ratings but was overruled and went ahead and rated everyone while doing their other university-sanctioned performance reviews. Turned them in and was told I had to remove any \"excellent\" ratings as \"It won't motivate them to do better\". So now I am in the position of handing back forms that tell my staff that someone who comes in really early, puts in huge amounts of extra time and creates 150+ small videos to help students understand concepts (and gets great student satisfaction) gets an \"acceptable - just doing your job\" and so does someone else who turns up and delivers the same old material for the last 10 years and does nothing to keep current. I anticipate resignations, very unhappy people and a drop in overall performance. Shit is going to hit the fan.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "The director of my department was hired on after 4 people complained to the hire ups about her emotional and psychological abuse. I had to take 2 weeks off before the winter break just to gain my sanity back. I have been here a year, and through her interim director position and on the hiring committee for her position and there is nothing I could do to spare us from her getting the FT position. Now, others have quit; one is waiting for retirement; and I am trying to find another department to transfer to. The only problem I have with our system is, I can't bring up the issues to anyone else, or say anything to any outside departments or I would look like the \"pot stirrer\" or the \"troublemaker\". Her fake politeness is overly sappy, and I am sure she's ruining my transfer opportunities, because while I have a great work ethic, \"It's my personality she doesn't like\".", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "A teacher was more or less asked to leave his job after leading a course module that stirred controversy. The fun thing is that more than 80% of students taking the course rated the module as \"the best part of our entire program\" or \"extremely enlightening\", while a tiny number of students (10ish %) felt offended and went complaining to the administration. Interesting times.", "role": "assistant" } ]

[ { "content": "What drama is happening in your department right now? After hearing some interesting tales of pettiness, I'm looking to hear yours. What drama is happening among your department or school now? How do you plan to cope with it?", "role": "user" }, { "content": "It is pretty quiet in my cray-cray department right now. Hmmm, it’s almost disturbing how quiet it is. I’m sure something is brewing though.", "role": "assistant" } ]