“We need to make this house more secure,” N frets. “These huge picture windows, these flimsy locks – anybody can get inside!”
“This is a very low-crime area,” I respond. “Why are you so worried?”
“Most instances of violent crime are perpetrated by people we know and not by random strangers.”
“But we don’t know any dangerous people.”
“Are you forgetting where you work? After your stories of what goes on in academic departments, I’d be less worried if you worked at a jail,” N exclaims, and I can’t really object.
Here is the problem: exploiting adjuncts is obviously wrong. But having tenured professors do nothing but teach 2-3 sections of Spanish 101 in a semester isn’t good either. They go nuts with boredom and make people want to turn their houses into fortresses.
Clarissa's Blog 
Yeah one of my colleagues is coming off of maternity leave in the fall and will be teaching nothing but 3 sections of Spanish 101. While it’s nice to have only one prep, it also is maddening to teach the same class three times in one day. I’ve done it before under normal circumstances (taught 3 of the same class), and it’s exhausting and awful. Plus, the third class always gets screwed. By the third time, you forget what you’ve already told them and are so tired of the subject that you want to end class early every time.
Everyone thinks they are doing my colleague a favor by giving her this “easy” load. What they don’t understand is that when you have a baby, you need more challenging mental stimulation, not less. When you’re unchallenged, you feel so useless. She’s going to be nuts by the end of it.
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Just out of curiosity, but….what goes on in academic departments? Regarding dangerous people, not everybody knows whether the people they know are dangerous or not.
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What doesn’t? I’m not even that old but I’ve seen every kind of insanity, intrigue, drama, conflict, etc over the years. My only explanation is that people are bored to death.
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