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The reason for the season

I was raised Lutheran, in a really devout Pennsylvania Dutch family.  We went to church five times between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday.  And on Christmas Eve, we attended two evening services, one at 7 and one at midnight.  And if Christmas Eve happened to fall on a Sunday, we went to the morning service as well.  The evening services often coincided with a performance for me.  Sometimes my brother and I did a duet, but usually I sang a solo, like "O Holy Night" for instance.  I still think it's a beautiful song (and fun to sing, btw), despite the fact that I haven't attended a Christian Christmas Eve service in many years.

In my youth I was quite adamant about the TRUE reason for Christmas.  It was all about baby Jesus, of course!  And then I went to college and learned about the Pagan Yule holiday and the conversions to Christianity.  Maybe it wasn't really about Jesus after all.

Nonetheless, I wanted to believe that the holiday is about peace and goodwill toward all.  It's such a lovely idea, isn't it?  There are even songs that say as much.  (Course they say goodwill to "man" or "mankind" but I hope you'll allow me this gender-neutral license.)

I look around me, desperate to find this peace and goodwill.  I run errands and discover hordes of vehicles on the roads, packing the parking lots...so much activity!  And so many of the people are annoyed, and frustrated, and cranky.  I try to avoid running errands this time of year.  And malls?  Malls are downright scary places at Christmas time.

What is the season about?  Shopping.  Buying presents, lots of presents.  Regardless of how much money someone has (or doesn't have), now is the time to spend, spend, spend!  Is that supposed to reveal generosity?  I don't feel generous when I buy Christmas presents, I feel obligated.

And yet, I feel somewhat ambivalent.  Our economy relies upon this activity to keep businesses afloat and to provide jobs for millions.  But I'll admit that I'd prefer to see more employment in the provision of basic services for our fellow Americans.  Better education, better infrastructure, better parks and recreation, better care for the most vulnerable.  Instead, we've collectively decided that we want jobs that provide us with more cheap stuff.  After all, WalMart employes 1.4 million of our fellow citizens.  So I guess that's what really matters.

Ivory Tower Tragedy

The Tragedy Series is a collection of delightfully inane and ludicrous problems.  You might enjoy browsing the series.

valuing collegiality

As a labor economist, I'm continually amazed by the apparent divide between what we say we want in employees and coworkers and what we actually compensate and incentivize.  There are few things worse that working with a total asshole, and yet, assholes abound, and often in positions of great power.

I just saw a description of a top administrator (not at my university) which lauded him as "collegial."  That must mean that "collegial" behavior involves nasty yelling phone calls to employees at their homes, bullying people who disagree, playing favorites with friends, and acting unethically in romantic relationships with employees and job candidates.  Good to know.

I've often heard the top brass at my university talk about how we cannot request or reward collegiality in our departments. Why can't we?  Every employee should be expected to pull his/her weight for the greater good of the institution.  Why does that not have value?  And bad behavior is too often unchallenged.  For instance, after I experienced a few troubling incidents, my supervisors strongly recommended that I not initiate a grievance "for my own good."  That may have saved me from any further backlash, but it also gave apparent endorsement for the bad behavior.  How does that serve our institutional mission?

It's clear to me that the status quo enables bullying behavior and does little to nothing to encourage or reward collegiality.  And I suppose the take-away message is that publications or donor dollars or grants received are so valuable that we should turn a blind eye to any cruelty and intimidation that might come along.

the flexibility that wasn't

When I thought about pursuing an academic career I was excited by the flexibility it seemed to provide: flexible course schedules, being able to work on research whenever was best for me, flexibility in the kinds of classes I would teach, flexibility in choosing the research I would pursue....  But this flexibility comes at the expense of lots of rigidity.

I have very little flexibility in choosing where I will live, for instance.  In any given year, there are at most 30 jobs that fit my specific area in economics.  And nearly all of these jobs are in locations that I find unpalatable.  I also have very little flexibility in who I work with.  Most departments hire junior faculty who stay in the department until they retire, and some faculty don't retire.

Sure, there are other jobs that have limited flexibility in terms of location and coworkers, but I cannot think of many that are as inflexible as the academy.  And most jobs in other industries are in or near urban areas.  There are gobs of universities and colleges in the proverbial middle of nowhere.  For an urbanophile like me, that's quite a sacrifice.

In most other jobs, when people want something else, they can go on the market and within a couple months or years, find a new opportunity to pursue.  In academia, that's not an easy task.  I shake my head at the realization that it took me so long so see how my super-flexible job isn't really flexible at all.